Space and astronomy news
Using NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft’s close encounters with Venus and Mercury, researchers were able to measure the lifetime of neutrons, an important prediction of the Standard Model of particle physics.
Continue reading “Spacecraft was able to measure how long neutrons last before they decay”
In the past decade and a half, a total of 4,164 thousand planets have been discovered beyond our Solar System, while another 5220 await confirmation. The majority of these were detected by the venerable Kepler Space Telescope, while the remainder have been observed by the Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and a combination of other satellites and ground-based telescopes.
But in what is a new record, a known super-Earth was recently observed by the Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (ASTERIA) small satellite – making it the smallest observatory to spot an exoplanet. Led by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this mission has demonstrated that small satellites can perform complex tasks in space normally carried out by large observatories.
Continue reading “Tiny Cubesat Detects an Exoplanet”
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”
NASA’s Mars Odyssey Orbiter doesn’t get a lot of headlines lately. It was sent to Mars in 2001, to detect the presence of water and ice on Mars, or the past presence of it. It also looked at Mars’ geology and radiation. It’s been doing its job without a lot of fanfare.
Now Odyssey’s infrared camera has given us three new images of Mars’ moon Phobos.
Continue reading “New Pictures of Phobos, Seen in the Infrared”
One of the most enduring questions about Earth regards the origins of its water. Where did it come from? One widely-held theory gives comets the honor of bringing water to Earth. Another one says that Earth’s water came when a protoplanet crashed into early Earth, not only delivering a vast quantity of water, but creating the Moon.
Now a new study shows that the minor planet Vesta got its water from space dust. Could that help explain the origin of Earth’s water?
Continue reading “Space Dust Delivered Water to Vesta, Could it Have Done the Same for Earth?”
The Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon, yes. But they also hopped, bounded, and shuffled. And sometimes they fell, spectacularly. That caused a lot of consternation back on the Earth, especially for the engineers who designed the Apollo spacesuits.
Continue reading “Hilarious Supercut of Astronauts Falling on the Moon”
The sun constantly cycles between periods of activity and periods of inactivity, and a new technique allows scientists to better predict when things will start getting interesting.
Continue reading “Scientists are much better at predicting when the Sun is going to become more active”
This is probably one of the least surprising announcements to come out of the coronavirus pandemic.
During a virtual meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board, NASA’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, made an announcement. He said there’s no way the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will meet its target launch date of March 2021.
Already on a tight timeline, work on the telescope has slowed during the pandemic.
Continue reading “Well. It Looks Like James Webb is Getting Delayed Again, but it Should Still Launch in 2021”
Once again a new measurement of cosmic expansion is encouraging astronomers to reconsider the standard cosmological model. The problem is the Hubble constant and dark energy. While we have a broad understanding of dark energy, pinning down the value of the Hubble constant has been a problem, since different measurements keep getting different results. Now a new study has been published which further complicates things.
Continue reading “Evidence is Building that the Standard Model of the Expansion of the Universe Needs some new Ideas”
In July of 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft made history when it became the first robotic explorer to conduct a flyby of Pluto. This was followed by another first, when the NASA mission conducted the first flyby of a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) on December 31st, 2018 – which has since been named Arrokoth. Now, on the edge of the Solar System, New Horizons is still yielding some groundbreaking views of the cosmos.
For example, we here on Earth are used to thinking that the positions of the stars are “fixed”. In a sense, they are, since their positions and motions are relatively uniform when seen from our perspective. But a recent experiment conducted by the New Horizons team shows how familiar stars like Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 (two of the closest stars in our neighbors) look different when viewed from the edge of the Solar System.
Continue reading “New Horizons is so Far From Earth That the Positions of the Stars Look a Little Different From its Perspective”