Science

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 […]

Where in the world is Perseverance?  The NASA rover is wandering around Mars’s Jezero Crater right now, gathering evidence and samples in titanium tubes for scientists back on Earth to analyze for evidence of microbes. The agency and its partners are developing a mission for late this decade to ferry those samples back to Earth no earlier […]

The global community of astronomers can’t get enough of JWST as the huge, powerful space telescope passes through a series of carefully planned and controlled deployments, consisting—as you’ve probably heard by now—of 344 single-point failures, over 75% of which are now retired.  The telescope, to state the obvious, is rather large. The size is a […]

Best Christmas Gift Ever? If you’re an astronomer, the answer to that question is a resounding Yes.  ICYMI: The James Webb Telescope (JWST) blasted off on Christmas aboard an Ariane 5. As successor to Hubble and the most powerful space telescope ever built, JWST should significantly advance our understanding of the observable universe.  The $10B telescope is […]

Icarus’ wings got a makeover. NASA’s Parker solar probe, made out of carbon composite rather than wax, passed the Alfvén critical boundary marking the edge of the Sun’s corona in April, NASA announced this week. The probe is three years into a seven-year mission to collect data on the corona that we can’t understand from […]

NASA is about to get new eyes and ears. This week, the agency plans to launch two long-term science missions: the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Laser comms: LCRD will be the first NASA mission sent to orbit this week, with its launch window opening early Tuesday morning. The […]

NASA is set to launch its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday. The mission will slam a spacecraft into an asteroid, hoping to knock it slightly off its orbit.  A bit more detail: NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office contracted the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to build DART. APL […]

Axiom Space will conduct around 25 research experiments on its forthcoming ISS mission, the Houston company said Tuesday. Ax-1’s research portfolio includes senescent cell studies, a two-way hologram demo, and experiments in disciplines that run the gamut from astrophysics to neurology.  Ax-1, 101: Axiom Mission 1 launches in 94 days, give or take. Beyond the research bounties it will bring […]