Space and astronomy news
Note: Updates in reflect changes in the new launch time for Starlink-3. We’ll add in updated sighting opportunities as they become available.
By now, you’ve no doubt heard of (or seen) Starlink. SpaceX’s mega-satellite constellation has become a permanent fixture in our skies as of late, with several routine passes on any given week. But have you seen the supposed ‘black sheep’ of the flock, DarkSat?
Continue reading “Stalking Starlink’s ‘DarkSat’”
Ever since it made its historic landing on Jan. 3rd, 2019, the Chang’e-4 mission and its Yutu 2 rover have been busy exploring the lunar surface. Just recently, the mission passed its first year of operations and earned the distinction of being the first rover to travel a record 357.695 meters (1,173.5 ft) on the far side of the Moon. And in between all that, the mission has also provided some truly fascinating images of the lunar surface.
Thanks to a data release issued on Monday (Jan. 20th), the public can now peruse through all of the high-resolution images taken by the Chang’e-4 mission. The data, which was released by the Ground Research and Application System (GRAS) of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Project, includes images of the far side of the Moon that were taken with the lander’s terrain camera and the panoramic camera on the Yutu-2 rover.
Continue reading “China Releases New Pictures From the Surface of the Moon”
M-type (red dwarf) stars are cooler, low-mass, low-luminosity objects that make up the vast majority of stars in our Universe – accounting for 85% of stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. In recent years, these stars have proven to be a treasure trove for exoplanet hunters, with multiple terrestrial (aka. Earth-like) planets confirmed around the Solar System’s nearest red dwarfs.
But what is even more surprising is the fact that some red dwarfs have been found to have planets that are comparable in size and mass to Jupiter orbiting them. A new study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has addressed the mystery of how this could be happening. In essence, their work shows that gas giants only take a few thousand years to form.
Continue reading “Giant Planets Could Form Around Tiny Stars in Just a Few Thousand Years”
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached its target, asteroid Bennu (101955 Bennu), on December 3rd, 2018. Since then, the spacecraft has been examining the asteroid’s surface, looking for a suitable landing spot to collect a sample. The problem is, Bennu has a much rockier and challenging surface than initially thought.
Continue reading “OSIRIS-REx Flew 620 Meters Above its Landing Site. Confirms that it’s a Boulder-Strewn Nightmare, Just Like the Rest of Bennu”
Article updated at 3:40 pm CST, 1/24/20.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover experienced a technical glitch last week, causing it to temporarily lose its sense of direction and freeze in its tracks. But the talented rover repair team back on Earth enabled a fix, and Curiosity is now back in action.
Continue reading “A Glitch Caused Curiosity to Freeze in Place. But It’s Better Now”
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been in orbit around Mars for almost 14 years. It carries a variety of instruments with it, including the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument. That instrument has collected thousands of images of Mars.
Continue reading “This is Probably Sandstone Layers on Mars. Absolutely Beautiful”
In 2014, Boeing was awarded a contract through NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to provide commercial launch services to the International Space Station (ISS). To this end, they have been busy developing the CST-100 Starliner, a space capsule that will be able to deliver cargo and crews of up to 7 astronauts to the ISS. On December 20th, 2019, the Starliner passed a major milestone when it conducted an uncrewed test.
While an error prevented this Starliner (designated Calypso) from docking with the ISS as planned, the space capsule still managed to make it to space and land safely near White Sands, New Mexico. This makes it the first crew capsule to touchdown on land in the United States. To celebrate this accomplishment, Boeing recently released a highlight reel of footage taken by cameras inside the Calypso during the flight test.
Continue reading “Finally! We get to See a View From Inside Boeing’s Starliner During its First Flight”
Why is there so little nitrogen in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P)? That’s a question scientists asked themselves when they looked at the data from the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. In fact, it’s a question they ask themselves every time they measure the gases in a comet’s coma. When Rosetta visited the comet in 2014, it measured the gases and found that there was very little nitrogen.
In two new papers published in Nature Astronomy, researchers suggest that the nitrogen isn’t really missing at all, it’s just hidden in the building blocks of life.
Continue reading “Rosetta Saw the Building Blocks of Life on Comet 67P”
Which camp are you in: volcanoes? Or asteroids?
When it comes to the extinction of the dinosaurs, science has whittled it down to those two possibilities. The asteroid strike has been the leading candidate for quite some time now, but those darn volcanoes refuse to stand down.
A new study is presenting even more evidence that it was the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, and not volcanoes.
Continue reading “The Evidence is Leaning More and More Towards an Asteroid Ending the Dinosaurs”
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #647.