Stories about the wondrous world of space science.
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.) […]
Happy birthday, Percy! Our favorite little rover, Perseverance, has now spent a full Earth year on the surface of Mars, taking samples and searching for life in the Jezero Crater. We’ve been reflecting on the journey Perseverance has made over the past year. The $2.7B rover has traveled about 2.2 miles and taken eight samples […]
A rocket will launch from another planet, potentially within a decade. If that’s not enough to get your head spinning, we’ve done a little more reading up on the lengthy checklist for the Mars Ascent Vehicle, or MAV for short. The Perseverance rover has been milling about on Mars for a while now, collecting samples of dirt from the planet’s […]
A flagship European satellite has a power issue. Sentinel-1B (S-1B), an Earth observation satellite, hasn’t been generating data since Dec. 23, when ESA noticed an issue with the Sentinel and switched off its powerful radar platform. According to an alert published Monday, ESA was unable to restore the power needed for radar operations in recent days. Sentinel 101: ESA […]
