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While the name might fool you at first glace, black holes are anything but empty.
Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is covered in a thick icy crust, but beneath it might lie an ocean of liquid water despite there are minus 201 degrees Celsius on the surface. This is a theoretical assumption, which is however backed by very solid indirect evidence. Gushing plums of water from the moon's south pole also point to this conclusion. If this is true, Enceladus can be envisioned like a gourmet candy: a hot core (maybe chocolate?), surrounded by a layer or water, and all covered in a crunchy crust of ice.
NASA recently uploaded a strikingly beautiful photograph on their website showing a petrified sand dune on Mars. The image was actually pieced together from several shots taken using Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) on August 27th. From end to end, the panorama spans a full 135 degrees of other-worldly awesomeness, with east to the left and southwest to the right.
An ocean of magma could explain why Jupiter's moon Io has volcanoes in the "wrong place". This would also mean that Io has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface and might be potentially habitable.
The gargantuan cluster is 9.8 billion light years away from us, houses at least 27 galaxies and has a combined mass equal to 400 trillion Suns.
New close-ups of Pluto’s surface have been revealed by NASA today, revealing a stunning variety of features on the frozen planetoid. A range of majestic mountains surrounds seemingly endless plains, and now, we get to see them all with unprecedented quality. It’s so spectacular that even NASA’s investigators were surprised. “Pluto is showing us a […]
Scottish manufacturer Ballantines comes to the aid of space-dwellers the world round (and beyond) with a new, high-tech glass that promises to make getting hammered with style in space a reality.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope jointly used their instruments to identify the oldest galaxy yet seen. Dubbed EGS8p7, this unusually luminous galaxy was formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang. When you peer that far into space and time, you're bound to find some freaky stuff. EGS8p7 did no disappoint. Already, the 13.2 billion-year-old galaxy is raising questions about how we think the Universe evolved during its infancy.
It's ludicrous, but it might just be crazy enough to work. On Monday, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SPACE conference, Masahiro Ono unveiled one of NASA's most recent concepts: hitching a ride on a comet. In short, once a spacecraft is close enough it would launch a tether with a harpoon on the other side, attach to the comet or asteroid then basically reel in until touch down. Once there the probe stays put, recharging its batteries by harvesting energy all while performing some science experiments. When it's done, the probe can detach in search of a new piggyback ride.
Cryogenic sleep is usually the stuff of science fiction, most recently featured in the award winning blockbuster Interstellar. Of course, the most epic display of cryosleep can be found in Alien, in my humble opinion. Nevertheless, the theme is the same: cosmic voyagers are suspended in a sort of low metabolic state where vital functions are kept to a bear minimum by cooling the body, while not actually killing the person. It's quite useful, especially when you consider interstellar travel involving years, decades or even perhaps centuries of traveling. It's no wonder then that NASA is interested in actually turning this into a real-life application.
A month ago the New Horizon spacecraft made a historic flyby over Pluto, marking the first time a man-made instrument has ventured this far in the planetary solar system. The journey took nine years, which might seem like a lot, but you need to remember we're talking about nine billion miles. That's quite fast, around 4 km/second actually. To get a sense of the kind of velocity involved, Clay Bavor - a Google product VC - made this GIF showing what flying at 11,278 metres would like from the cockpit of a Boeing 747, a SR-71 Blackbird and, finally, New Horizons. It quite speaks for itself.
Hubble has recently captured a dazzling image of a "cosmic butterfly" - the planetary nebula (PN) M2-9. The star has not only ejected its outer layers, but exposed its inner core, which is now illuminating the layers in a spectacular and violent display.
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to ever set foot on the Moon and one of the most respected and vocal astronauts, will serve as a research professor for aeronautics and senior faculty adviser for the Florida Institute of Technology. He will be spearheading the "Buzz Aldrin Space Institute", whose main purpose will be to create a plan for a permanent settlement on Mars by 2040.
Although we've yet to discover life forms on any other planet, astronomers are confident that not only we'll be able to discover alien life, but we'll be able to chart its spread through the Universe.
Gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter may have formed not from a planetary core, but rather from tiny pebbles that stuck together. This theory would solve one of the biggest problems about our understanding of planetary formation: the timeline. The previous model was called core accretion: you have a planetary core of rock and ice that […]
The Cassini shuttle, that has been in Saturn’s orbit since 2004, took some spectacular images of the rather elusive moon, along with geophysical measurements. A crater-riddled, icy landscape covers Saturn’s moon Dione, but that doesn’t take away anything from its charm. Though it’s nowhere near as famous as some of Saturn’s other moons – especially Titan – […]
A company from Japan wants to become the first to advertise a product on the moon. The sports drink producer, Pocari Sweat, has contacted SpaceX - an American company that regularly ferries cargo to the International Space Station and is close to sending astronauts to the International Space Station - to land a canned sports drink. This would mark a milestone in human history: the first ad on the moon - both disturbing and interesting at the same time. Maybe any kind of interest in moon exploration (who knows what happens when you try to land a can on the moon?) in this moment is welcomed. Maybe.
Hailing from the University of Sydney, professor Lewis is set to deliver a talk at the National Science Week in the city today, and said the futuristic concept was actually embedded in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
I’m not a big fan of selfies, but when you’re on Mars, you can take all the selfies you want! NASA’s Curiosity Rover has taken some pretty cool of itself – and the Martian surroundings. This latest picture was taken by the rover at “Buckskin” – the 7th rock the rover will sample for analysis. […]
A while ago, we were telling you about the Indian Orbiter Mission to Mars – the cheapest Mars mission ever. The probe made history as it entered Martian orbit, and is still sending high quality data back to Earth, as well as amazing pictures. Now these photographs focus on the Ophir Chasma, a giant canyon on […]
Thoth Technology, a Canadian company, was granted an US patent for a space elevator. Technically, though, it's not exactly a space elevator since cargo and astronauts would only be ferried about 12 miles above sea level into the stratosphere. From here, a shuttle would carry the cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station or some other dropzone in space (maybe even the moon) for a third of the cost it currently takes
An exciting "infant Jupiter" rich in methane has been discovered using an Earth-bound telescope. The newly found planet might reveal how planets like Jupiter formed and developed during their early stages.
If we want to send people to Mars, we're going to need some bigger engines - and that's exactly what NASA's building right now. In fact, we're going to need the most complex engine ever built by mankind.
After years and years without a shine, two Russian cosmonauts took a spacewalk to scrub all the dirt and fumes from the International Space Station's windows. While scrubbing windshields is fairly easy and quick here on Earth, in space everything's a lot more difficult. The whole operation took five and half hours. Granted, the two cosmonauts completed two other tasks during this time: they retrieved an old experiment which measured how superheated gas from space affected the ISS hull and also cut loose an old communication antenna. Just a regular day's work, I guess.
SpaceVR started a Kickstarter campaign today with the goal of sending a 3D, 360-degree camera to the ISS. This camera will collect footage that you can then view in virtual reality goggles. Space-views from the comfort of your home? Yes please!
As we were telling you yesterday, astronauts aboard the International Space Station were preparing for the first meal that involved space-grown veggies. It's a remarkable moment, which might pave the way for future space exploration... and it's delicious!
Scientists analyzing data from the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Arizona spotted a huge lava lake on Io, one of Jupiter’s largest moons. We’ve known for a while that Io is quite an amazing (and hellish) place; it’s the most geologically active place in the solar system, with extreme geologic activity occurring as a result of tidal […]
Mars is now a cold and dry place, but it wasn't always like this - the Red Planet used to have a lot of water on its surface. Now, researchers have discovered one of the very last places where (potentially habitable) liquid water existed on Mars.
Back in 2013, we were telling you about about a small agricultural project on the International Space Station - now, the space veggies are ready to be harvested; for the first time, astronauts will be eating food grown in space.
An amateur radio enthusiast from the UK has managed to have a quick chat with the International Space Station using a device he built in his shed. Adrian Lane, of Gloucestershire, sent out a call signal to the ISS and was absolutely shocked when they actually replied to him. “They came back to me and […]
We call it the "dark side" of the Moon, but that's a rather improper name - a better one would be the "far side", because it's not dark at all. As if to prove that point, NASA just released images of the moon that would be impossible to capture from Earth, highlighting the far side illuminated completely.
Distillers have long been interested in the particularities of the aging process, and how to mature the drink to bring out that specific, mellow flavor we search for in a glass of quality whiskey. Japanese based distillers Suntory set their hopes high for what they feel is the next big thing for whiskey aging - as high as the ISS, to be specific. They announced earlier this week that several samples of their beverage will be sent to the ISS with the intent to study the "development of mellowness in alcoholic beverage through the use of a microgravity environment."
NASA scientists have taken grainy images of a peculiar asteroid nicknamed the "Space Peanut". The asteroids measures 1.2 miles across and made its closest approach at 7.2 million kms from Earth - 19 times closer than the Moon.
In its most recent flyby, NASA’s Cassini space probe discovered some strange red streaks on Tethys – one of Saturn’s 62 known moons. “Like graffiti sprayed by an unknown artist, unexplained arc-shaped, reddish streaks are visible on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Tethys. As the Saturn system moved into its northern hemisphere summer over the […]
Scott Kelly has been in space for 6 months, and will stay for a full year. The American veteran astronaut actually commands the International Space Station, and his Twitter account is an absolute delight, with often updates on what’s happening on the ISS and glorious pictures of the Earth, as it’s seen from outer space. […]
Two different Philae instruments, known as Ptolemy and COSAC (Cometary Sampling and Composition), hunted for organic compounds— the building blocks of life as we know it — on and around Comet 67P. While the initial data burst received from the lander did hint at the existence of organics on its surface, the data was limited and its meaning not very clear. The new data is much more interesting.
If you do something "once in a blue moon", that's really rare - once every 2 or 3 years, to be more exact. There's no exact pattern for blue moons, sometimes they grace us with their presence sooner, and sometimes it takes more time. It's been about three years since we had the last one, and it will be another three before we have the next one: the blue moon comes on Friday.
The Golden Records were the recordings NASA sent into space to represent our planet's life and culture, ranging from the sound of rain to samples of Beethoven and Mozart, Chucky Berry and Blind Willie Johnson.
Although we still don’t know the full effects of what space travelling does to the human body, scientists have came one step closer to discovering. Scientists have recently discovered that spending a significant amount of time in space thins your skin. According to a Reuters report, it’s been now revealed that spending enough time in space can make your […]
New Horizons has sent over so much data that NASA will be analyzing and learning more about Pluto for over a year - such is the case now: these new images from New Horizons reveal flowing ice, impressive mountain ranges and a surprisingly thick atmosphere.
It took more than was expected, but the three astronauts set for the International Space Station docked with the International Space Station at 10:46 p.m. E.T. You can watch them here: The rocket had a successful launch at 5:02 p.m. EDT (2102 GMT) to experienced Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and rookie astronauts Kjell Lindgren with NASA and Japan’s Kimiya […]
Planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our Sun. This extremely exciting announcement was made by NASA today; while this doesn't mean that the planet is inhabited, it does mean that it has many of the characteristics that our own Earth-Sun system have, and the odds of it hosting life seem significant.
This week space fanatics were teeming with excitement after it was announced that Stephen Hawking had teamed up with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner in a quest to find extraterrestrial life.
The soaring ice mountains of Pluto are accompanied by wide plains and mysterious deep troughs, show photographs received from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
OK, we all know New Horizons zoomed past Pluto, took some breathtaking pictures and then called back home to tell us everything’s fine. But let’s switch our attention a bit and focus on Charon – Pluto’s Moon that’s just as mysterious as its name implies. Charon is the largest of the five known moons of the […]
It is similar to the asteroid belt, in that it contains many small bodies, all remnants from the Solar System’s formation. But unlike the Asteroid Belt, it is much larger – 20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. In order to catch a better glimpse of these remote leftovers from the birth of the solar system, NASA places its hopes in the success of the New Horizons mission.
Before you get overly excited, no, Pluto hasn't been once again accepted as a planet - it's still officially a dwarf planet (though in our hearts, you'll always be a planet, Pluto!). However, this emblematic picture of the solar system from my childhood is now complete, as seen in this great family portrait produced by Ben Gross, a research fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Basically, we have at least the one good image of all the worlds in our solar system.
New Horizons's trip to Pluto came and went - it was met with extreme enthusiasm at NASA headquarters and praised by astronauts throughout the world - but New Horizon's mission is far from over. The shuttle is adequately powered to sent back valuable data until the 2030s; for now, it simply "phoned" back home to say it's OK after zooming past Pluto.
Speeding at 14 km per second, NASA’s New Horizons shuttle went past Pluto, hurdling towards the edge of the Solar System. But regardless of what happens, New Horizons’ flyby of the dwarf planet will remained firmly anchored in the history of space exploration. “We have completed the initial reconnaissance of the Solar System, an endeavour started under […]
Pluto, the Solar System's most well known planet wanna-be is having its week in the spotlight: NASA's New Horizons probe is offering an unprecedented look at the dwarf planet, and already revealing some interesting features.
