Space

May 24th, 2022 - The dust-covered probe will focus on collecting data during its final months on Mars. NASA has shared the final self-portrait that will be taken by the InSight Mars lander, showing dust-caked solar panels that blend into the surrounding regolith. The InSight mission is expected to end this year, and the lander will need all of its remaining power to gather as much scientific data as possible. Featured Videos Now playing Now playing In a press conference last week, NASA announced that InSight ... [Read More]

May 24th, 2022 - The astronomers' goal: find an artificial intelligence algorithm to interpret microlensing events captured by the upcoming Roman Space Telescope and speed detection of exoplanets around other stars. They achieved that, but the AI told them something unexpected and deep: the theory used to infer stellar and exoplanetary masses and orbits from observations was incomplete. Digging into the mathematics, they uncovered a theory that explains all types of microlensing events and possible ambiguities ... [Read More]

May 24th, 2022 - No spacecraft is safe from the Red Planet's swirling dust. China's Zhurong rover is currently in safe mode as it waits out a Martian dust storm, according to Chinese state-run media , and it may remain in safe mode until the end of 2022. Featured Videos Now playing Now playing Zhurong landed on Mars a year ago this month; since then, the rover has recorded video and audio from a sweeping lava plain called Utopia Planitia, over 1,000 miles from NASA's Perseverance rover. Zhurong's initial ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - Nearly half of Sun-like stars are binary. According to new research, planetary systems around binary stars may be very different from those around single stars. This points to new targets in the search for extraterrestrial life forms. Since the only known planet with life, the Earth, orbits the Sun, planetary systems around stars of similar size are obvious targets for astronomers trying to locate extraterrestrial life. However, nearly every second star in that category is actually a binary ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - We've been capturing space-based images of Earth for nearly three-quarters of a century, but these eight views of Earth are each profound in their own way. Hard to believe, but this photo of Earth, captured on October 24, 1946, was taken 11 years before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik to low Earth orbit. Our first view of Earth as seen from space, sadly, was taken by a camera mounted to a modified V-2 rocket (yes, the same V-2 rocket used by the Nazis to terrorize Britons during the Second ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - The subdued red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this view by a dense scattering of piercingly blue stars. In fact, it is thanks to Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that we are able to see Liller 1 so clearly in this image, because the WFC3 is sensitive to wavelengths of light that the human eye cannot see. Liller 1 is just 30,000 light-years from Earth — making it a relatively close neighbor in astronomical terms — but it lies within the Milky Way ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - NASA recently celebrated 32 years of Hubble observations. The space telescope was launched back in 1990. Since its launch, it has managed to complete over 1.4 million observations. Now, a physicist named Casey Handmer has combined all of those observations into one breathtaking image. This is what all 1.4 million Hubble observations look like together And here's one that's a bit easier to see on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/dlNS5jbod3 — Casey Handmer, PhD (@CJHandmer) April 19, 2022 Handmer ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope Seyfert galaxies are named after astronomer Carl K. Seyfert who, in 1943, published a paper about spiral galaxies with very bright emission lines. We now know that about 10% of all galaxies may be Seyfert galaxies. They belong to the class of " active galaxies " – galaxies that have supermassive black holes at their centers accreting material, which releases vast amounts of radiation. The active cores of Seyfert galaxies are at their brightest when ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - Scientists are baffled at the odd telemetry data being relayed by Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977 A NASA image of one of the Voyager space probes. Voyager 1 and its identical sister craft Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. On Sept. 5, 1977, NASA launched a space probe named Voyager 1 into the cosmos. Nearly 45 years later, much to the delighted astonishment of astronomers throughout the world, it is still humming along as it ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - Science We Must Unravel Jupiter's Cryptic Origin Story to Find ET BORN AND BRED Why the King of Planets could help us find life on other planets. Astrobiologists want one thing above all else: to find proof of alien life . That's easier said than done, of course. Space is vast. Stars, planets, and moons are innumerable. Our probes are few and far between and our telescopes can see only so far and with so much fidelity. But it helps to narrow the search. To that end, a team of astrobiologists ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . (CNN) Measuring the expansion rate of the universe was one of the Hubble Space Telescope's main goals when it was launched in 1990. Over the past 30 years, the space observatory has helped scientists discover and refine that accelerating rate -- as well as uncover a mysterious wrinkle that only brand-new physics may solve. Hubble has observed more ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - Incredible New Views of the Sun – As You've Never Seen It Before Powerful eruptions, breathtaking views across the solar poles, and a strange solar 'hedgehog' are among the incredible haul of spectacular images, movies, and data returned by Solar Orbiter from its first close approach to the Sun. Although the analysis of the new dataset has only just begun, it is already clear that the ESA-led mission is providing the most extraordinary insights into the Sun's magnetic behavior and the way ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - In Don't Look Up , two scientists discover that an asteroid is headed directly towards Earth, and they calculate that the planet's destruction by the asteroid is a sure thing. Currently, life is imitating art, as an asteroid is heading for Earth — but fortunately, it is not expected to collide with our home planet. Here's the latest news on the asteroid, when it's predicted to come near Earth, and the details on what exactly asteroids are made of. When is the next asteroid predicted to ... [Read More]

May 23rd, 2022 - New research explains how meteorites called aubrites may actually be shattered pieces of the planet closest to the sun from the early days of the solar system. Mercury does not make sense. It is a bizarre hunk of rock with a composition that is unlike its neighboring rocky planets. "It's way too dense," said David Rothery, a planetary scientist at the Open University in England. Most of the planet, the closest to the sun, is taken up by its core. It lacks a thick mantle like Earth has, and no ... [Read More]

May 20th, 2022 - Last week, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration delivered its second stunning and haunting image of the accretion disk around a black hole. And this time, the picture captured Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole that lurks at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy. Despite being released in 2022, the EHT collaboration collected the data for this historic shot back in 2017. But why did it take them a half-decade to process the data and generate a final image? The ... [Read More]

May 20th, 2022 - China's first large space telescope could launch as soon as 2023. The new telescope will be called the Chinese Space Station Telescope. It will be roughly comparable to NASA's long-standing Hubble Space Telescope, though its field of view will be somewhat larger. China's first large space telescope could launch in 2023 China's first large space telescope will be similar to NASA's Hubble telescope. Image source: NASA China has been making big moves when it comes to space exploration. In 2021, ... [Read More]