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For the second time, astronomers have discovered a planet in a solar system with four stars! While most solar systems only have one star, two stars are pretty rare, three are very rare, and four stars… that almost never happens – or at least this is what we thought. The planet wasn’t newly discovered, but […]
According to a new report, a team of astronomers has observed a supernova explode - split into four different images. It's a "needle in the hay stack" scenario which astronomers were hoping to find for a long time... and now they finally did.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is expected to remain stationary for at least a couple of days after a shortcircuit has rendered its arm useless for the time being. The engineering problem occurred on February 27 as the rover was preparing to start drilling in the Martian soil.
NASA's Towed Glider Air-Launch System will launch small payloads, like mini-satellites, into space more efficiently and at a fraction it currently costs, according to officials. In a spree of ingenuity, researchers have devised a launch system comprised of a double piggyback of sorts. First, a drone will fly off the ground and into the upper atmosphere, carrying a glider. The glider in turn carries a rocket, which ultimately carries the payload meant for Earth's orbit. Once the drone reaches 40,000 feet, it decouples the glider which immediately turns on its on-board booster. Once, again, high enough, the glider will decouple the rocket which fires for the final climb into space.
Many people change a lot after their youth... and so to did our Universe. Nowadays, galaxies contain both dust and gas, but back in the early Big-Bang days, the earliest galaxies had no dust, only gas. Now, a team of astronomers has discovered a very young galaxy with lots of dust - the equivalent of a white-bearded young man.
There's something so eerily exciting about spacewalks... the idea of walking into outer space with only a cable connection you to a ship rotating at 7 km/s some 400 km above the Earth is just... out of this world - literally! Now, two astronauts have completed ISS upgrades is what can only be described as a picture perfect spacewalk. This entire spacewalk took one hour less than planned for.
After an exhaustive analysis conducted over a year and a half, NASA's Curiosity Rover has finally confirmed the existence of methane on Mars, somewthing which indicates that life may have existed (or still exist) on Mars.
Astronomers have discovered a humongous supermassive black hole that’s 12 billion times as massive as the Sun. What’s peculiar about it isn’t necessarily its mass – some even bigger black holes have been found – but rather its age. Observations suggest that the black hole 12.8 billion light-years away, which means what scientists are reading […]
The Curiosity Rover, currently on Mars, took another selfie in the "Mojave" area, where it is preparing to have a second taste of Mount Sharp, the central peak within Gale crater. The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's robotic arm.
The Sahara Desert and the Amazon area have few things in common - one is a dry, barren wasteland, while the other is the most fertile area on Earth. But according to a new NASA study, there may be more than meets the eye when it comes to the two - dust from the Saharan area makes the trans-Atlantic journey, fertilizing the Amazonian rainforest with phosphorus.
Jupiter's satellite Europa is definitely one of the most interesting places in our solar system - despite being really far from the Sun and frozen on the surface, NASA researchers actually believe it is the best bet to search for extraterrestrial life. Now, scientists and engineers have actually planned a mission aimed to reveal whether life on Europa exists or not.
Dark matter and black holes are some of the most mysterious things in the Universe, so a connection between the two is absolutely thrilling. In a new study, astronomers report a strange link between the amount of dark matter in a galaxy and the size of its supermassive black hole. That’s an amazing new black […]
Too close for comfort – a team of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa concluded that a dim star passed through the Oort cloud, our solar system’s distant cloud of comets. The star missed the Earth by less than one light year, and passed five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima […]
The team behind Interstellar's awesome special effects meant business when they set out to emulate space, celestial objects and black holes as scientifically accurate as possible. In a paper published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the special effects crew describe at length the innovative computer code they used to generate stunning imagery, but also make new scientific discoveries. Whenever a SciFi movie spews new scientific advancement, well, you know it's a good one!
Selected from more than 200,000 applicants, 50 men and 50 women have become the final contenders for the one-way trip to Mars. A Dutch not-for-profit company is planning to send groups of four people on a one-way trip to the red planet in about a decade to start a permanent human settlement - now, we can take a better look at those people.
Mysterious cloud-like formations hovering over Mars challenge our understanding of the Red Planet's climate. Interestingly, amateur astronomers spotted the bizarre feature rising off the edge of the red planet in March and April of 2012 and since then, no satisfying answer regarding to their formation has been put forth. Now, scientists have concocted a new theory, but there's only one problem - it poses more questions than it answers.
At this years' Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, NASA's Glenn COMPASS Team discussed at large the possibility of exploring Titan, Saturn's largest moon, with a robotic submarine that would dive deep inside the oceans of liquefied natural gas. Such a mission, if ever funded, could help answer some important questions like what are the defining chemical building blocks required to birth and sustain life. Titan is very similar to Earth in terms of cycling systems, elemental composition and terrestrial geography, so there's much insight to be gained.
Just like a deep fried scoop of ice cream, comets, such as the much heralded Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko which saw a spaceship land on it last year, are thought to be frozen on the inside, wheres the surface is hard and crystallized. The team of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) believe the findings further expand our knowledge on comets. Some suggest that life on Earth first emerged thanks to key organic molecules and compounds brought forth by comets colliding with our planet. The more we know, the better we can assess these sort of ideas and, if found viable, how often such events might happen in the Universe.
People see our planet in different ways - and it's safe to say that astronauts have a different perspective from most people. Speaking to Derek from Veritasium Colonel Chris Hadfield, the former commander of the International Space Station, explains how it feels to see Earth from orbit.
Because the moon is tidally-locked to Earth, we’re used to seeing our cosmic neighbor like a stationary lonesome figure. Now, NASA released an animated simulation of the moon’s phase from its so-called dark side, offering an insightful glimpse from the other side of the coin. Far side of the moon – not so dark after […]
NASA is requesting 30 million dollars to begin working on a mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa, hoping to unlock some of the secrets of alien life. Despite having a frozen surface, the satellite is one of the likeliest candidates for extraterrestrial life in the solar system. Europa is a weird place. At a first […]
The next Mars exploration rover will likely feature a helicopter drone, which is expected to act as scouting drone to improve navigation. According to officials at NASA JPL, the drone could help the rover cover three times the distance Curiosity drives on a daily basis. We have Curiosity to thank for loads of new insights […]
A suborbital rocket carrying six research payloads was successfully launched into the Aurora Borealis. The probe will allow scientists to better understand the energy of the aurora and how this affects the Earth.
According to a new study, water once flowed on the surface of Vesta, the second-largest asteroid in the solar system. This took astronomers by surprise, as no one was really expecting to find this.
For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planetary ring system outside the solar system - and it's one of enormous proportions - 200 times bigger than Saturn's rings.
It's a remarkable day for NASA and space observations: the Solar Dynamics Observatory has taken its 100,000,000th photo! The mission, which has been in continuous operation since 2010 has greatly contributed to our understanding of the Sun and the Sun-Earth relationship.
Based on latest evidence and calculations, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, might be a a huge wormhole, stable and navigable. Astrophysicists combined the equations from general relativity with a distribution of dark matter to reach this conclusion
The magnetic field of asteroids lasted for a surprisingly long time, a new research has found. According to it, it may have lasted for millions and millions of years – long enough to potentially protect life forms hitching through the solar system. Asteroids and Life Asteroids are considered to be minor planets, with the larger […]
SpaceX, the company responsible for shipping cargo on and off the International Space Station, which wants to implement global access to the internet with a swarm of satellites, has confirmed a $1 billion investment from Google and Fidelity.
I recently came across this really great infographic with the space events of 2015. This list is of course not exhaustive and some things may change their date (it’s still just January), but it’s a pretty good reference. Check it out: So, the main events are: Atlas V MUOS 3 Rocket Launch 2015 NASA Innovative […]
Even crippled, NASA’s Kepler telescope makes awesome findings: using data acquired previously, the telescope discovered three planets just a little bigger than Earth orbiting a star relatively close to our solar system. Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars launched back in 2009. Kepler’s main mission was to […]
NASA's Dawn spacecraft is getting closer to Ceres - the largest object from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The space agency released some new pictures of the dwarf planet, and while these aren't the best pictures of Ceres yet, as the shuttle moves closer and closer, the pictures will get better and better.
Scientists have observed a massive burst of radio waves, helping them narrow down the potential sources of these huge bursts of energy. These events, also called blitzars, last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a million years. These are quite possibly the most interesting and shocking sources of […]
Nibiru followers might have cause to rejoice, as Spanish astronomers report a novel hypothesis that suggests two Earth-sized planets might be hiding out in the outskirts of our solar system. Thousands of years after the first planets besides our own were discovered by ancient Babylonian astronomers, it seems like determining the number of planets in our solar is far from being settled, despite Pluto's unfortunate destitution.
Curiosity is preparing for its second drill on Mars - its eyeing a rock which may have a salty story to tell. The rock may be a former lake bed, from which all the water has evaporated.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has officially begun its six month approach to the planet Pluto. This is the first time a human shuttle will flyby the icy dwarf planet.
Astronomers hunting for habitable Earth-like planets now believe that the best place to look is not around stars like our Sun, but rather around smaller, cooler stars—orange and red dwarfs. These are by far the most abundant stars in our galaxy, and all of them have at least one exoplanet.
The threat of a possible ammonia leak in the US sector of the International Space Station (ISS) forced the American astronauts to abandon their research and relocate to the Russian quarters. The hatch was reopened hours later after no leak was detected, NASA reported. Mission control, NASA/ESA confirmed there was no ammonia leak, hoping to get astronauts […]
For decades, astronomers have believed that meteorites are the building blocks of our solar system - the lego blocks for planets. But a new study from scientists at MIT and Purdue University suggests that this may not be the case after all - and we've given meteorites too much credit.
China’s has reached a new milestone in its space program – its latest spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, after being successfully tested on Earth a few months ago. Chinese media reports that the service module of a test lunar orbiter has successfully began orbiting the Moon. The goal of this mission is to […]
The Sylacauga meteorite fell on November 30, 1954, at 14:46 local time (18:46 UT) in Oak Grove, Alabama, near Sylacauga. However, the meteorite is often called the Hodges meteorite - because it struck Ann Hodges, who became the first person confirmed to be hit by a meteorite.
It's a belated Christmas on the International Space Station - a shipment of much needed groceries arrived, delivered by SpaceX.
A new study may have finally found where Earth’s water came from. There are currently two competing theories, with one claiming that our planet generated its own water geologically, while the other suggests that water was brought by icy comets or asteroids from outside. A new study concluded that most of the water we see […]
Since it was first launched in 2009, the $600 Kepler mission has discovered more than 1,000 alien worlds. Arguably it's one of the most successful space mission in history so far, further cementing its status as a legend. The milestone was breached after eight newly confirmed exoplanets were added to the tally, two of which are very similar to Earth and thus could support alien life.
Following the success of his 2014 Cosmos, the famous astrophysicist and science communicator just nabbed a weekly late-night series for National Geographic Channel called Star Talk. The format and name have existed for some time online as a podcast, where Tyson regularly talks and debates science and major topics concerning it, often featuring celebrities, comedians and scientists as guests.
Many are already preparing for Christmas – some shopping for presents, some Christmas lights… the usual. But as you’re gearing up for the winter holidays, NASA is watching you. Well, they’re not really watching you, it’s more that they are monitoring light emissions from big cities – and they report that during the holiday season, patterns in […]
I usually don’t pay much attention to the “Person of the Year”, but this one is really special. Euronews, the largest European news channel has named “The Rosetta Team” as their “Person of the Year”. Why it matters It’s almost always politician, economists or humanitarians that take the laurels – and for good reason. The […]
As far as manned spaceflight is concerned, all attention seems to be directed toward Mars, which makes sense after all considering it’s the most Earth-like planet in the solar system. It’s not as hospitable as it was a few billion years ago, though, and because of the long trip that realistically takes at least two […]
If you’ve always wanted to choose the name of stuff from outer space but never got the chance… now’s your time to shine! NASA is offering you the chance to name one of the craters of Mercury in honour of the MESSENGER mission, which is nearing its final days. Apply or Vote HERE. NASA, together with Johns […]
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover has discovered a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical which may indicate that there actually was life on Mars – or still is. The rover detected this high concentration in the atmosphere, as well as in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill. Curiosity on the Red Planet Curiosity has […]
