Stories about the wondrous world of space science.
The UK has announced that it has committed £30M ($36.9M) to ESA’s Ariel exoplanet telescope. What is it? The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel) telescope will be the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and atmospheric thermal properties of exoplanets. To do this, the telescope will study ~1,000 known exoplanets in visible […]
Not everything that ends up in space from the Earth’s surface is traveling on a rocket. In January, the island volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted, causing shockwaves across the Pacific… …and in the ionosphere, the region of space between 80-1000km above the Earth’s surface. Up there, Earth’s weather mixes together with that of space. Space […]
NASA has delayed its Psyche mission, which was previously meant to launch on a Falcon Heavy in early August to begin its journey to study the eponymous asteroid. Another NASA mission, Janus, is hitching a ride on Psyche’s rocket, but the launch delay poses a problem—the two Janus probes may not be able to meet […]
At the center of our galaxy—and, probably, at the center of most others—is a supermassive black hole, driving the complex swirl of stars and gas that we live in. Yesterday, scientists unveiled the first image of the Milky Way’s own black hole, Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), in shockingly high resolution. The now-viral […]
It’s official: NASA and German space agency DLR have agreed to end operations on the expensive airplane-mounted infrared observatory this year. NASA has been trying to cut the line item from its budget for a few years now, but for the past two years, Congress has restored the observatory’s funding in the agency’s federal budget. […]
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech During its 26th fight, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter snapped incredible images of the parachute and backshell that helped the chopper and the Perseverance rover to land on the Red Planet’s surface a little over a year ago. This was no coincidence: NASA and JPL intentionally directed the helicopter over to the landing site, […]
Once every blue moon ten years, NASA tasks the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine with determining the highest-priority planetary science missions for the next decade. The Academies published the fruits of their labor– “Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032”—yesterday, revealing a new ranked menu of deep-space […]
In a victory for NGOs and activists who have been pushing for more environmental accountability in space, the UN has adopted a provision that will ban the use of mercury as a satellite propellant. The UN provision: On Saturday, the UN added satellite propulsion to a long list of banned use cases for mercury under […]
NASA dreams of a future network in which superfast, globally distributed quantum computers transmit data back and forth from space nearly instantaneously, without any packet loss. Enter SEAQUE. The Space Entanglement and Annealing QUantum Experiment (SEAQUE), developed by JPL along with a team of researchers from across the world, is the next step in making […]
Climate scientists are asking NASA to extend the lifetime of the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) sensor, a project on the ISS that provides vital forest health tracking information, The Guardian reports. The $150M sensor has been attached to the ISS since April 2019. It’s scheduled to be deorbited next January. GEDI: The sensor, developed […]
Last week, an asteroid struck the Earth. And for only the fifth time ever, an astronomer found it—and tracked it—before it hit our planet. There are constantly asteroids on a collision course with Earth. Most of these are small, and they burn up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Big ones, like the one that killed […]
We found Tatooine. Luke Skywalker, here we come. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have been tracking the trajectory of Kepler-16b, a planet orbiting two stars that also orbit one another. And yes, if you stood on the surface of the exoplanet you could watch a double sunset. (We can neither confirm nor deny a Jawa population.) […]
