Universe Today

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

A Glitch Caused Curiosity to Freeze in Place. But It’s Better Now

Image taken by the Curiosity rover's Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) on January 17, 2020, (Sol 2648). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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.

January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 by Evan Gough

This is Probably Sandstone Layers on Mars. Absolutely Beautiful

Light-toned layered deposits thought to be sandstones in West Candor Chasma, Mars. They may have formed in an ancient wet and potentially habitable environment. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

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.

January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 by Matt Williams

Finally! We get to See a View From Inside Boeing’s Starliner During its First Flight

Boeing's Stariner atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. Credit: NASA

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.

January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 by Evan Gough

Rosetta Saw the Building Blocks of Life on Comet 67P

Comet 67P as seen by Rosetta on 7 July 2015. By ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0-igo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41733207

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.

January 22, 2020January 22, 2020 by Evan Gough

The Evidence is Leaning More and More Towards an Asteroid Ending the Dinosaurs

What an asteroid hitting the Earth might look like. Image credit: NASA/Don Davis.

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.

January 22, 2020January 22, 2020 by Susie Murph

Carnival of Space #647

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog.

Click here to read Carnival of Space #647.

January 22, 2020January 22, 2020 by Evan Gough

Betelgeuse is Continuing to Dim! It’s Down to 1.506 Magnitude

Betelgeuse was the first star directly imaged -- besides our own Sun, of course. Image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Andrea Dupree (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), Ronald Gilliland (STScI), NASA and ESA

Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming?

January 22, 2020January 23, 2020 by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: January 22, 2020 – Dr. Kenneth Carpenter of HST and WFIRST

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Allen Versfeld (https://www.urban-astronomer.com/ / @uastronomer)

Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter)

Michael Rodruck (@michaelrodruck)

This week we welcome Dr. Kenneth Carpenter to the Weekly Space Hangout.

January 22, 2020January 22, 2020 by David Dickinson

A Twilight Tryst: Venus Meets Neptune in the Dusk Sky

Never seen Neptune? It’s time you should, and this weekend offers a fine time to try, as the faintest planet in the solar system approaches the brightest in the dusk sky, for a splendid conjunction of the pair.

January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 by Evan Gough

Space Force Uniforms are Perfectly Camouflaged for a Forest Moon

The US Space Force has revealed their uniforms. Image Credit: US Space Force

The United States Space Force has given us a look at their new uniforms, and critics are savaging them on Twitter and elsewhere. That’s because the new uniforms are camouflage.