A New Plan to Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts at Earth and Across the Solar System On October 19th, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) in our Solar System. This body, named 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), was spotted shortly after it flew by Earth on its way to the outer Solar System. […]
Balloon Mission May Also Work to Detect Quakes on Venus An opportunity in 2019 lays the groundwork for balloon-borne detectors on Venus, working to unravel a key mystery. The skies of Venus may become a busy place in the coming decade, using technology field-tested here on Earth. A team out of NASA JPL-Caltech hypothesized that […]
This is how you get Tatooines. Binary Star Planet Formation One of the less appreciated aspects of George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars was that he predicted the existence of planets in binary star systems years before we saw even the first exoplanet. Now a team from the University of Cambridge and the Max Planck […]
Water Vapour has Been Discovered at Ganymede Ganymede has been getting alot of attention lately. It was the co-star of a video from Juno recently, and now scientists found something to make it an even more intriguing place visit – water vapor. It has been well known for years that Ganymede harbors water, and lots […]
Europe Launches its new Robotic arm, Which Will Crawl Around the International Space Station Like an Inchworm The robotic arms of the ISS are some of its most useful tools. The arms, designed by Canadian and Japanese space agencies, have been instrumental in ferrying around astronauts and shepherding modules to one side of the ISS. […]
Perseverance is About to Collect the First Sample on Mars That Could Eventually be Returned to Earth On Feb. 18th, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed within the Jezero Crater on Mars. Like its predecessor, Curiosity, a fellow member of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP), the goal of Perseverance is to seek out evidence of possible […]
When the Sun Dies, Earth’s Magnetosphere won’t Provide Protection any More The Earth’s magnetic field is an underappreciated wonder of the natural world. It protects our atmosphere, provides some of the most breathtaking scenery when it creates auroras, and allows people to navigate from one side of the world to the other. Unfortunately, it won’t […]
Zhurong Finds its Own Parachute on the Surface of Mars As of July 23, 2021, China’s Mars rover Zhurong has traveled 585 meters across the surface of Mars. And along the way, it’s taking pictures of interesting sights. Some of the most intriguing recent images from the rover show debris from the rover’s landing. During […]
A Gravitational Wave Observatory on the Moon Could “Hear” 70% of the Observable Universe Gravitational-wave astronomy is set to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. In only a few years it has significantly enhanced our understanding of black holes, but it is still a scientific field in its youth. That means there are still serious […]
Incredible! Astronomers see a Moon-Forming Disk Around a Newly Forming Planet Planetary formation is a complicated, multilayered process. Even with the influx of data on exoplanets, there are still only two known planets that are not yet fully formed. Known as PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets, which were originally found by the […]
Observing the Night Side of Venus is Actually Pretty Tricky Observing the dark side of planets is hard. In the visible spectrum, they are almost unobservable, while in the infrared some heat signatures may come through, but not enough to help see what is going on in a planet’s atmosphere. Now a team from the […]
Russia Just Launched a New Science Module to the Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is about to get a little bigger. On July 21, the Russian Space Agency launched the station’s newest module into orbit aboard a Proton-M rocket. The module, dubbed Nauka (which means science), is the station’s first new module since […]
A new Balloon-Based Observatory Could Produce Images as Fine as Hubble Launching satellites is an expensive business – at least for now. But satellites are necessary in astronomy for one major reason – it gets telescopes above the atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere and its associated weather patterns are a massive hindrance to collecting good images. […]
Forget About Interstellar Flights. Tiny Light Sails Could be Used to Explore the Solar System Today Solar sails have been receiving a lot of attention lately. In part that is due to a series of high profile missions that have successfully proven the concept. It’s also in part due to the high profile Breakthrough Starshot […]
The Moon has Been Mildly Preventing Coastal Erosion, in the 2030s, That Protection Ends Planet Earth is currently experiencing an unprecedented warming trend. Average global temperatures are rising at an accelerated rate in response to greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activity. These rising temperatures, in turn, result in the release of additional greenhouse gases […]
Scientists Have a new way to Predict the Most Damaging Solar Storms Space is full of hazards. The Earth, and it’s atmosphere, does a great job of shielding us from most of them. But sometimes those hazards are more powerful than even those protections can withstand, and potentially catastrophic events can result. Some of the […]
Micrometeorites Churn up the Surface of Europa. If you Want to Find Life, You’ll Need to dig Down a Meter or So In the coming decade, NASA and the ESA will be sending two dedicated missions that will explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. These missions are known as the Europa Clipper and the JUpiter ICy moons […]
Neutron Stars Have Mountains, They’re Just a Fraction of a Millimeter High The universe has some very extreme places in it – and there are few places more extreme than the surface of a neutron star. These ultradense objects form after a supergiant star collapses into a sphere about 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. […]
Here are the First New Pictures From the Fully Operational Hubble The astronomy community breathed a huge sigh of relief earlier this week when the Space Telescope Science Institute announced the Hubble Space Telescope’s major computer issues had been fixed after a grueling month of recovery work. They had to bring in every expert they […]
Ions Surf Through Jupiter’s Magnetic Field, Triggering its Auroras Auroras come in many shapes and sizes. Jupiter is well known for its spectacular complement of bright polar lights, which also have the distinction of appearing in the X-ray band. These auroras are also extreme power sources, emitting almost a gigawatt of energy in a few […]
