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In the early hours of December 2nd, China deployed its Chang’e-3 spacecraft on route for the moon after launching it via a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang launch centre in Sichuan. The spacecraft is expected to reach lunar orbit in about 4 days, if everything goes as planned. On 14 December, the probe is expected to touch […]
Brigham Young University (BYU) engineers have teamed up with one of the world’s leading experts in origami to solve one of space exploration’s most challenging (and ironic) problems – the lack of space. Working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a team of mechanical engineers have designed a solar array that can be tightly compacted for […]
UPDATE: Telescopes saw the giant ball of ice and dust disappear behind the star, but then fail to emerge as expected. ISON is dead and gone, folks. Sorry. The ISON comet, a giant icy cosmic body from deep space, may just become the most spectacular comet ever – if it lives past today’s Thanksgiving that is. […]
If astronauts are ever to live on the moon or in deep space outposts, a sustainable living plan in which they would grow their own food (plants) in greenhouses is required. NASA is taking the first steps in this direction by developing a project which aims to germinate plants on the moon’s surface. Thousands of […]
Astronomers all over the world rejoiced recently after they were treated to a most privileged event. Using the RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response) system in New Mexico and Hawaii, in conjunction with the most sophisticated observatories in the world, researchers witnessed what may be the most brightest event this century: an extreme flash of light […]
This oddball cosmic body, called P/2013 P5, has puzzled astronomers for a while. By mass and orbit, it can only be classed as an asteroid, but the fact that it trails gas or dust would make it a comet. In fact, this weird rock has six tails, which would maybe make it a supercomet! Researchers at […]
At the beginning of the year the most powerful meteoroid strike since the infamous Tunguska event took place in Russia, over Chelyabinsk. The meteor exploded many kilometers above ground, however the event released so much energy that it appeared much brighter than the sun and the ensuing shock wave caused billions of rubles worth of damage […]
Black holes, the most massive objects in the Universe that we know of, which exert a gravitational force so big that even light can’t escape, come in one shape, but a variety of sizes; on the smaller end, you have stellar black holes, which take shape when a sufficiently large star collapses into itself, and […]
India is a sort of economic paradox. Its general population is among the poorest in the world, yet it is still wealthy in many respects. It wouldn’t be a mistake to call India a space superpower, at least in the way the term gets tossed in the press. Attesting this fact is the country’s recently […]
A statistical analysis of observations based on the Kepler telescope indicates that 20 percent of all stars in the Milky Way host earth-sized planets, a significant part of which could potentially be habitable. Habitable planets in the Milky Way NASA’s Kepler telescope is crippled – it’s reached the end of its four year mission, but […]
It’s a big, bad, lava world – and according to what we know about astronomy, it simply shouldn’t exist. Kepler-78b circles its star every 8 and 1/2 hours, featuring one of the tightest known orbtits. According to currently accepted theories on planetary formation, it couldn’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it […]
Although the Kepler Space Telescope itself is defunct due to a malfunction that rendered it out of operation some months ago, the mission goes on as scientists churn through massive amounts of data gathered by Kepler, enough to keep them busy for years to come. One of the fruits of Kepler is an exoplanet called Kepler […]
Each of NASA’s Great Observatories – Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra – have been designed to peer through the Universe in a characteristic manner. The telescopes have provided along the years massive amount of astronomical data and have helped scientists make important discoveries. What if you combine each of the telescopes’ strong points to assemble one […]
Paulo Lozano, of MIT’s Space Power and Propulsion Laboratory, is a space enthusiast for as long as he can remember, growing up with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and spending much of his childhood in bookstores studying science and other worlds in our solar system. His passion and hard work eventually landed him a job at MIT where […]
Observations from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have for the first time uncovered a ’tilted’ solar system, with two planets orbiting a star at a 45-degree angle. Did you ever wonder why the planets from our Solar System are all in the same plane? They formed from a flat disc of gas and dust revolving around the […]
Right after World Space Week ended just last week – an event that celebrates the anniversary of the signing of the Outer Space Treaty that prohibits the militarization of space – Russia made a test launch for one of its new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles; missiles capable of launching their nuclear warhead payload from outer […]
An international discovered a young, exotic, rogue planet – PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass six times that of Jupiter; it was formed apporximately 12 million years ago – which makes it a newborn in terms of planets (the Earth was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. “We […]
A lost moon of Neptune has not been seen since its discovery in the late 1980s – until now, that is. A new announcement from the 45th Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society revealed the rediscovery of the moon of Neptune which was only glimpsed briefly back in the […]
For the first time, researchers have found evidence of a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding, obliterating everything in its path before ultimately crashing down into the Sahara. Comets and asteroids Many people will probably be asking themselves “Didn’t we find comet evidence on Earth before?”. No, not really – if you did wondeer that, […]
Researchers at MIT have recreated Mars-like conditions within a three-story-tall cloud chamber in Germany, adjusting the temperature and humidity to match those on Mars – basically creating Martian clouds. Judging by the images Curiosity has sent us, Martian clouds look quite similar to ours – the gauzy, high-altitude wisps look a lot like the cirrus […]
Astronomers have created the first cloud map of a planet outside our solar system, a sizzling, Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b. NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes found patchy clouds on this hot Jupiter which was discovered in January 2010. Hot Jupiters are some of the most common planets from what we know so far; […]
A black hole is simple and clear, at least according to the model proposed in 1963 by Roy Kerr; his model of a clear, smooth black hole is now the currently accepted paradigm. But a group of scientists led by Thomas Sotiriou, a physicist of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste claims […]
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used greatly in everyday life, in things like food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn’s Moon Titan. I really recommend watching the video below, as it explains the situation in great detail: A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan’s lower atmosphere by […]
After finding no methane in the Martian atmosphere, Curiosity has shown that the soil and dust on the surface of the Red Planet contain a few percent water, judging by weight. Yes, yes, I know, Curiosity has found signs that water flowed on Mars sometime during its past (1, 2, 3), but this time, it […]
Manu Sharma is an aerospace engineer with a great vision: he wants high-school kids and college students to have the real possibility to conduct their own experiments in space via the International Space Station. The whole idea is extremely noble and the prospects young science enthusiasts have after such an experience are grand. But doesn’t […]
It’s been a while since we posted something about the Curiosity rover – now, Curiosity has reported that the Martian atmosphere lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data seemed to indicate the contrary. The 4 wheel laboratory conducted extensive tests for traces of Martian methane, and the results were conclusive; the […]
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, followed by observations done with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes, astronomers have identified what’s considered to be the densest galaxy found so far in the nearby part of the Universe. Classed as an “ultra-compact dwarf galaxy” and dubbed as M60-UCD1, the density of stars in the galaxy is about 15,000 greater […]
Over 83.000 volunteer science citizens, 16 million galaxy classifications, 300.000 nearby galaxies: this is what you get when you ask the public for help in learning more about our universe. The project, which was named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe. Researchers say that […]
It is currently believed that we live in a lopsided Universe: cosmologists reached this conclusion by examining the detailed structure of the left over radiation from the Big Bang. Now, two cosmologists presented data which seems to suggest that our Universe is actually curved slightly, in a saddle-like fashion; if correct, their model would invalidate […]
No joke – and yes, you can play World of Warcraft, or any other computer game for that matter. So, do you need some time off from your stressful life, while making good money and also helping science? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then pack your bags and head on to Houston because NASA wants […]
Evidence of surprisingly diverse life forms have been found in the 100.000 year old sediments of a subglacial lake in Antarctica. British scientists working on the site have apparently gathered samples without contaminating them. The possibility of life existing in these cold, dark lakes, hidden beneath (sometimes) kilometers of ice has fascinated researchers. We’re talking […]
Last year, an astronaut named Don Pettit started an unusual, but very poetic and insightful writing project on NASA’s website: “Diary of a Space Zucchini” detailed the life and ‘thoughts’ of a zucchini onboard the International Space Station (ISS). “I sprouted, thrust into this world without anyone consulting me,” wrote Pettit in the now-defunct blog. […]
The CubeSat is a revolutionizing miniaturized communications satellite only 10x10x10 cm. Because of its tiny size and weight, these satellites can be launched at a much lower cost. Some 50 to 60 CubeSats have been launched in the past 15 years since they were first developed at the California State Polytechnic University, most of which […]
NASA’s black-hole-hunter spacecraft, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has located its first 10 supermassive black holes. The mission is the first ever which can focus the highest energy X-ray light into detailed pictures. If everything goes as NASA planned, then over the next two years, the mission will locate several hundreds of such […]
Founder of Paypal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk has gained the reputation of a brilliant entrepreneur and engineer. By many he’s viewed as a real life Tony Stark, a comic book and, most recently, Hollywood blockbuster character better known by his Iron Man persona. Musk in many respects, in my humble opinion at least, […]
If you were to look at them from the safety and serenity of your home, the gas giants of our solar system seem to be quite peaceful. Their surface appears smooth, unscathed by meteor impacts or other such phenomena – but this couldn’t be further from the truth, as they sometimes show us. In 2010, […]
Dark energy is the mysterious force that drives the Universe’s expansion at an ever increased pace. Probing and understanding this force is thus imperative for astronomers’ and cosmologists’ efforts of peering through the Universe’s secrets. Recently, a new massive project set on probing the nature of dark energy was launched, called the Dark Energy Survey (DES), […]
Some 5.000 years separate us from the birth of Ancient Egypt, in 3.100 BC. Add another 5.000 years, and you still haven’t reached the date when Göbekli Tepe was built. The temple (now in southern Turkey) took shape over 11.000 years ago, around the same time Plato’s hypothetical Atlantis goes under, 5 millennia before the […]
Ever since 2010, I’ve been telling you about a group of scientists and investors which wants to send people to Mars – on a one way trip, that is. But in early 2013, this took a huge step forward, materializing in the form of Mars One – a non-profit organization that plans to establish a […]
As we know by now, most galaxies, including our own, have a supermassive black hole at their center. However, the one in our galaxy, Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star) has a surprisingly small appetite, something which has puzzled astronomers for years. Sagittarius A* is 4 million times as massive as the sun, but it is […]
Physicists have successfully reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in an experiment which used ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber. This is the first experiment which recreates at least some of the conditions from the Big Bang. “This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of […]
Our farthest scout in the Universe, the Voyager-1 probe, has traveled some 18.7 billion kilometers so far and it doesn’t show any sign of stopping. Soon enough, it will be the first man-made object to leave our solar system, when exactly however has been a matter of debate. For the past year or so, contradictory […]
When the space shuttle was first designed, its makers intended on building the very first partially reusable craft capable of sending cargo or people into space and then return. The vision was extremely seducing: you launch the craft and then within a few days it would be ready to fly again, greatly reducing cost and […]
The general belief surrounding black holes is that they’re massive, but vicious matter gobbling cosmic objects. While it’s true the reputation of black holes as destroyers precede them, we should not forget that they fill an important role in the Universe as creators. Scientists now know that black holes are inexorably linked with galaxies, lying […]
After years of planning and hard work, the Gemini Observatory team recently unveiled some of the work they performed using one of their newly installed instruments. Called the FLAMINGOS-2, the instrument provides astronomers with a powerful mix of capabilities, including high-resolution wide-field imaging (infrared) as well as spectroscopy. The newly mounted piece is already on […]
The Sun is gearing up for a major polarity switch, NASA announced: the North Pole which was in the northern hemisphere, has now started pointing south. The solar magnetic polarity reversal cycle has an 11 year period, which is still not fully understood. “This always happens around the time of solar maximum,” says David Hathaway, […]
We’ve all come to love and cherish the visionary images of astronauts out in space in their spacesuits. There’s something truly incredible about getting to see a humanoid form right in space, overlooking our beautiful blue marble, wrapped inside a protective suit that shelters the new millennium explorer from the cold, deadly grips of vacuum. […]
We all appreciate and love the sun’s gaze in the morning, but truth be told were it not for our planet’s protective magnetic fields the sun’s warm embrace would have suddenly turn into a death ray. So instead of scorching Earth, solar wind bounces off the magnetic field, which leads radioactive particles to circulate the […]
Launched just month, NASA’s IRIS telescope which is currently orbiting Earth has already beamed down its first images of the sun. The details are unprecedented, as scientists can now study a multitude of thin, fibril-like structures that have never been seen before, revealing enormous contrasts in density and temperature. The telescope’s main mission is that […]
Hailed by many as the “comet of the century”, the ISON comet is expected to blaze so bright after it enters the inner solar system that it will become visible even to the naked eye from here on Earth and for many months too. This only if it will survive the first leg of its […]
