After NASA’s DART mission slammed into asteroid Dimorphous in September 2022, scientists determined the impact caused tons of rock to be ejected from the small asteroid’s surface. But more importantly, DART’s impact altered Dimorphos’ orbital period, decreasing it by about 33 min … | Continue reading
China has released artist renditions of the spacecraft and lander module that will send the first taikonauts to the Moon. The post China Reveals Its Lunar Lander Design appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
The last place to look for windstorms is on the Moon. Yet, it has swirls on its surface that look like the wind put them there. Since there’s no atmosphere on the Moon, planetary scientists had to look for another cause. It turns out there’s a connection to local magnetic anomali … | Continue reading
SpaceX Crew-7, the next group of four astronauts, are now on board the International Space Station, and this diverse crew is definitely putting “International” in the ISS. The new crew hails from four different countries: the US, Denmark, Japan and Russia. There will be 11 people … | Continue reading
Most North America gets to see the Moon blot out Antares Thursday night. The post Catch a Cycle of Lunar Occultations of Antares Starting This Week appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
The Ingenuity helicopter continues to explore the landscape around Jezero Crater on Mars, now more than 800 days into its original 30-day demonstration mission. Recently, Ingenuity completed its 54th flight on the Red Planet. However, things haven’t gone exactly to plan the past … | Continue reading
Before it retired, NASA's Mars Insight Lander sent home detailed data about the rotation of Mars. From these data, planetary scientists have discovered that the planet's rotation rate is accelerating by about four milliarcseconds per year, shortening its day by a fraction of a mi … | Continue reading
A new study estimates how many exoplanets the ESA's PLATO mission will discover during its four-year run, with encouraging results! The post The PLATO Mission Could be the Most Successful Planet Hunter Ever appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
New research shows that Mars' Olympus Mons may have once been a volcanic island surrounding by ocean. The post Olympus Could Have Been a Giant Volcanic Island in an Ancient Martian Ocean appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
There are so many asteroids. Just in our own backyard, we’ve found over 30,000 Near Earth asteroids. Exploring them using traditional methods and launching a custom-made mission, like Hayabusa or OSIRIS-REx, would almost certainly be cost-prohibitive. So how can we assess whether … | Continue reading
amma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe, briefly outshining all the stars in their galaxy combined. They typically last for just seconds or a few minutes at the most. In 2022, an ultra-long gamma-ray burst exploded in the sky, lasting so long, with two se … | Continue reading
Three former insiders who have played a role in dealing with UFOs — or as they’ve now come to be known, unidentified anomalous phenomena — say the U.S. military knows more than what it’s been telling lawmakers about encounters with potentially alien technology. During a House sub … | Continue reading
There’s an old joke among astronomy students about a question on the final exam for a cosmology class. It goes like this: “Describe the Universe and give three examples.” Well, a team of researchers in Germany, the U.S., and the UK took a giant leap toward giving at least one acc … | Continue reading
Until recently, astronomers could not observe the first stars and galaxies that formed in the Universe. This occurred during what is known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages,” a period that took place between 380,000 and 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Thanks to next-generation instrum … | Continue reading
The universe is awash in gravitational waves. The collisions of massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars generate many of them. Now astronomers are wondering about the environments where these catastrophic events occur. It turns out they might need to look at quasars … | Continue reading
NASA recently used its powerful High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to take a breathtaking image of a dust devil traversing Syria Planum on Mars. One unique aspect of dust devils is their shadows can be used to estimate their … | Continue reading
China's Zhurong rover measured the magnetic environment on Mars, which is helping scientists narrow down when its global magnetic field disappeared. The post Mars Lacks a Planet-Wide Magnetosphere, but it Does Have Pockets of Magnetism appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
It’s a strange, eerie-looking place. Carbon dioxide gas appears… and disappears in cycles and bursts throughout the year. It’s how our planet would look if we could detect carbon dioxide (CO2) with our eyes. Scientists at NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office made comput … | Continue reading
The evolution of Earth’s climate contains many components. And new research has shown just how critical the ozone layer is to the surface temperature of the Earth. Without an ozone layer, our planet would be 3.5 Kelvin cooler. Many feedback and forcing mechanisms play a role in s … | Continue reading
Where does the solar wind come from? That’s a question solar physicists have wanted an answer to for decades. Now, the Parker Solar Probe is showing them exactly where this stream of particles exits our star on a journey out through interplanetary space. Parker follows an orbit t … | Continue reading
The 8-meter Gemini North telescope has been brought back online after seven months of repairs and refurbishment of its primary mirror. The timing couldn’t have been better, as the telescope was able to capture the brand-new supernova in the famous Pinwheel Galaxy. The bright supe … | Continue reading
Several million years ago, the core of our galaxy experienced a powerful event. It blew out a huge bi-lobed bubble that blasted through the interstellar medium in two directions. Whatever it was, it released huge amounts of energy from the central supermassive black hole, Sagitta … | Continue reading
A new analysis of those James Webb images showed that the galaxies it observed (deemed "too massive") could be even more massive than we thought! The post Remember Those Impossibly Massive Galaxies? They May Be Even More Massive appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
SpaceX’s second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, (ISS), Axiom-2 aka Ax-2, which is sponsored Axiom Space, received a “go” for launch from NASA on May 15 followed by a stamp of approval from Mother Nature on May 19, and finally a completion of the Laun … | Continue reading
New research by a team of Japanese climatologists and an astronomer shows how astronomical forces have caused major changes in Earth's climate. The post New Climate Model Accurately Predicts Millions of Years of Ice Ages appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
A new study by the SUper massive Black hole Winds in the x-rAYS (SUBWAYS) project explores the role of "space winds" in shaping galaxies. The post Galactic Black Hole Winds Blow Up to a Third the Speed of Light. The Impact on Their Galaxies is Impressive. appeared first on Univer … | Continue reading
New images from JWST have revealed the light from a globular cluster in this earliest epoch, showing that it contains large amounts of nitrogen produced by the explosions from early stars. The post New Clues to the Formation of Globular Clusters: Their Ultramassive Stars appeared … | Continue reading
Most people involved in some product development have had a lousy supply chain experience at least once in their careers. It would be so much easier if all the parts needed to make your product were available nearby and didn’t take much effort to get to you. That is especially tr … | Continue reading
Can anyone keep up with SpaceX in the commercial space race? It might be one of the four companies profiled in “When the Heavens Went on Sale” — a new book written by Ashlee Vance, the tech journalist who chronicled SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s feats and foibles eight years ago. Or … | Continue reading
The Mars Sample Return Mission is one of the most ambitious missions ever conceived. Though the samples won’t be returned to Earth until 2033 at the earliest, the Perseverance Rover is busy collecting them right now. Ideally, Perseverance could gather as many samples as we like a … | Continue reading
A fluffy hot jupiter has an orbit that doesn't line up with the rotation of its star. The post Bizarre Exoplanet Breaks All the Orbital Rules appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
When astronauts return to the Moon in the next few years, the plan is to have them stay for good while establishing a permanent outpost on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor. Like all space missions, a lunar outpost will require fuel for long-term sustainability, but would it be … | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning new image of the ice giant world Uranus. But what stands out most is the dramatic new view of the planet’s rings, which show up as never before with JWST’s infrared eyes. Instead of being faint and wispy, the rings show up brill … | Continue reading
A newly discovered asteroid called 2023 DW has generated quite a buzz over the past week, due to an estimated 1-in-670 chance of impact on Valentine’s Day 2046. But despite a NASA advisory and the resulting scary headlines, there’s no need to put an asteroid doomsday on your day … | Continue reading
A Japanese company has put out the call for passengers who’d be willing to pay more than $175,000 for an hours-long ride in a balloon-borne capsule that will rise as high as 15 miles (25 kilometers). Technically, that’s nowhere near the boundary of outer space, but it’s high enou … | Continue reading
Based on seismic data from about 200 earthquakes in the past decade, a team of Australian scientists found evidence of a fifth layer in Earth's interior: an innermost-inner core! The post The Earth has an Even More Inner Core, and it's a Ball of Solid Metal appeared first on … | Continue reading
It’s notoriously difficult to take a picture of a black hole. But when they are surrounded by material we have an opportunity to witness the hole carved out by the event horizon. But what we see in the famous images of black holes isn’t the event horizon itself, but a magnified a … | Continue reading
Solar Orbiter’s unique vantage point recently allowed researchers to make a crucial observation, of the solar system’s innermost world. The post ESA’s Solar Orbiter Spies a Transit of Mercury appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
An international team of astronomers spotted a young, massive star orbiting very close to Sagittarius A*, which was previously thought to be impossible. The post A Very Young Star is Forming Near the Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
A new study considers how lunar dust launched from the surface of the Moon could help reverse Climate Change. The post Dust From the Moon Could Help the Shade the Earth and Slow Down Climate Change appeared first on Universe Today. | Continue reading
Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole is one of the locations on NASA’s shortlist for human exploration with the future Artemis missions. But because craters at the lunar poles — like Shackleton — at have areas that are perpetually in shadow, known as permanently shadowed reg … | Continue reading
This week, NASA’s Curiosity rover stumbled across the best evidence yet that liquid water once covered much of Mars in the planet’s distant past: undulating rippled rock formations – now frozen in time – that were sculpted by the waves of an ancient shallow lake. But perhaps the … | Continue reading
Using China's FAST telescope and a new technique, an international team of astronomers scanned 33 exoplanets for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The post The World's Largest Radio Telescope Just Scanned 33 Exoplanets for a Signal From Aliens appeared first on Univers … | Continue reading
There’s a lot of matter in the Universe, but not all of it is visible to us. Matter is, essentially, anything that has mass and takes up space. That includes us, the planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies. It also includes dark matter. It’s all spread out through space. Is matter … | Continue reading
If you want to know where you are in space, you’d better bring along a map. But it’s a little more complicated than riding shotgun on a family road trip. Spacecraft navigation beyond Earth orbit is usually carried out by mission control. A series of radio communication arrays acr … | Continue reading
In a recent paper submitted to The Astronomical Journal in November 2022, a scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne quantifies how the Earth has not heard a radio signal from an extraterrestrial technological civilization over the course of approximately t … | Continue reading
In a recent paper accepted to Contemporary Physics, a physicist from Imperial College London uses past missions and recent findings to encourage the importance of searching for life in the atmosphere of the solar system’s most inhospitable planet, Venus. This comes as a 2020 anno … | Continue reading
A team of astrophysicists has discovered a binary pair of ultra-cool dwarfs so close together that they look like a single star. They’re remarkable because they only take 20.5 hours to orbit each other, meaning their year is less than one Earth Day. They’re also much older than s … | Continue reading