Space and astronomy news
For many of us, gardening has been a therapeutic distraction during this time of pandemic quarantine. But some researchers from the Jet Propulsion Lab have been gardening at home with a specific goal in mind: growing food on the Moon.
Continue reading “Radishes Can Likely Grow in Lunar Regolith”
One under-appreciated space asset is the photography skills of the Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station. They are extremely skillful photographers who don’t get the same recognition as their astronaut counterparts in their Earth observation skills. In particular, they have taken some stunning high-oblique shots of objects close to the horizon, with almost an 3-D effect.
Continue reading “Mount Everest, Seen from Space!”
As exciting and thrilling as it is to watch all the historic footage from the Apollo Moon landings, you have to admit, the quality is sometimes not all that great. Even though NASA has worked on restoring and enhancing some of the most popular Apollo footage, some of it is still grainy or blurry — which is indicative of the video technology available in the 1960s.
But now, new developments in artificial intelligence have come to the rescue, providing viewers a nearly brand new experience in watching historic Apollo video.
A photo and film restoration specialist, who goes by the name of DutchSteamMachine, has worked some AI magic to enhance original Apollo film, creating strikingly clear and vivid video clips and images.
Continue reading “AI Upscales Apollo Lunar Footage to 60 FPS”
The Hubble Space Telescope has the knack for finding every size and shape of galaxy imaginable – from small, medium to large, all the way up to that funky size of absolute units.
Continue reading “NGC 2275: An Absolute Unit of Galactic Flocculence”
Astrophotographer Thierry Legault is renowned for his amazing shots of spacecraft transiting the Sun. He’s now outdone even himself.
Continue reading “One of the Best Pictures Ever Taken of ISS from the Ground. You Can Even See the Canadarm2”
We love flyover videos from other worlds. These stunning videos, created from imagery gathered by orbiting spacecraft, can give us a sense of what it would be like to fly in an airplane on another planet. This latest flyover video from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, provides a stunning view of one of Mars’ most eye-popping craters.
Continue reading “Take a Flight Over Korolev Crater on Mars”
Oops.
Dropping a mirror on Earth is only minor cause for concern, perhaps about the potential of some upcoming bad luck. Dropping a mirror while on a spacewalk means creating a potentially dangerous new piece of space junk, all while thousands of people watch it happen, streaming live.
Continue reading “Astronaut Drops a Mirror During a Spacewalk. Now There’s Another Piece of Space Junk”
When you need a robotic arm in space, you call in the experts. Over the past several decades, the Canadian Space Agency has expertly provided robotic arms for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. And now it will build the next-generation of robotic systems for going to the Moon, called Canadarm3.
Continue reading “Canada is Going to be Building Canadarm3 for the Artemis Missions”
X-ray astronomy helps scientists study neutron stars, binary star systems, and supernova remnants, and even helps detect black holes. But even if human eyes had the ability to see X-rays, we couldn’t just look up at the night sky and see these amazing objects since Earth’s atmosphere absorbs and blocks X-rays. So, thank goodness for space telescopes! And the newest X-ray instrument in space has just produced a breathtaking view of the Universe, and is the deepest X-ray view of the sky we’ve ever seen.
Continue reading “If You Could See in X-rays, This is What the Universe Would Look Like”
Over the years, scientific estimates of potential intelligent life in our galaxy have ranged widely. Some estimates say just one (only us Earthlings) to just a handful, to possibly thousands or even millions. A new study attempts to quantify the number of other worlds we could potentially talk to by estimating the number of intelligent civilizations within the Milky Way that are actively communicating.
The number?
Continue reading “New Estimate Calculates There Could be 30 Intelligent Civilizations Communicating Across the Milky Way”