Space and astronomy news
The CHEOPS spacecraft is taking the first tentative steps in its mission. Back on January 29th, the spacecraft opened the cover on its lens. Now, we have the first images from CHEOPS.
Continue reading “Here are the First Pictures from CHEOPS”
Picture the space around Earth filled with tens of thousands of communications satellites. That scenario is slowly coming into being, and it has astronomers concerned. Now a group of astronomers have written a paper outlining their detailed concerns, and how all of these satellites could have a severe, negative impact on ground-based astronomy.
Continue reading “Astronomers Have Some Serious Concerns About Starlink and Other Satellite Constellations”
Earth and Pluto don’t have much in common. Earth is a vibrant, living world, whereas Pluto is cold, distant and lifeless. But one thing they do have in common is nitrogen. Earth’s atmosphere is about 78% nitrogen, and Pluto’s primary atmospheric constituent is also nitrogen, although the exact percentage is unclear.
On Pluto, where the surface temperature is about 42 Kelvin (-231 Celsius) most of that nitrogen is frozen. A new study says that Pluto’s frozen nitrogen drives the planet’s winds, and shapes its feature surfaces.
Continue reading “There Are Winds Blowing On Pluto, Driven by Frozen Nitrogen”
NASA has repeatedly imaged the Martian surface, and sometimes a feature appears that wasn’t there in prior images. That’s what happened when a meteorite survived the plunge through Mars’ thin atmosphere sometime between February and July, 2005. It created this impact crater north of Valles Marineris.
Continue reading “A Meteor Smashed Into Mars in 2005, Making this Crater”
SpaceX has been garnering all the headlines when it comes to satellite constellations. Their Starlink system will eventually have thousands of tiny satellites working together to provide internet access, though only 242 of them have been deployed so far. But now another company is getting on the action: OneWeb.
Continue reading “Here Comes the Next Satellite Constellation. OneWeb Launches 34 Satellites on Thursday”
Don’t worry. The oceans aren’t going to dry up. At least not any time soon, so no need to add it to the list of things to worry about.
But, what would our planet look like if they did? Dr. James O’Donoghue from JAXA decided to find out.
Continue reading “This is What the World Would Look Like if the Oceans Dried Up”
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity predicted that black holes would form and eventually collide. It also predicted the creation of gravitational waves from the collision. But how often does this happen, and can we calculate how many stars this will happen to?
A new study from a physicist at Vanderbilt University sought to answer these questions.
Continue reading “14% of all the Massive Stars in the Universe are Destined to Collide as Black Holes”
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has reached the end of its life. Its mission was to study objects in the infrared, and it excelled at that since it was launched in 2003. But every mission has an end, and on January 30th 2020, Spitzer shut down.
Continue reading “Good-bye Spitzer. We’ll Miss You But We Won’t Forget You.”
If there’s an award for “Selfie of the Year” NASA astronaut Jessica Meir just won it.
Continue reading “NASA Astronaut Jessica Meir Took a Space Selfie, Capturing her Reflection in the Space Station”
NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft went into fault protection mode on Tuesday January 28th. The fault protection routines automatically protect the spacecraft in harmful conditions. Both Voyagers have these routines programmed into their systems.
After it happened, NASA engineers were still in communication with the spacecraft and receiving telemetry.
Continue reading “Voyager 2 Went Into Fault Protection Mode, But Engineers Brought it Back Online”