But the process for redefining planet was deeply flawed and widely criticized even by those who accepted the outcome. At the 2006 IAU conference, which was held in Prague, the few scientists remaining at the very end of the week-long meeting (less than 4 percent of the world’s astronomers and even a smaller percentage of […]

ESA’s Gaia mission has produced the richest star catalogue to date, including high-precision measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars and revealing previously unseen details of our home Galaxy. A multitude of discoveries are on the horizon after this much awaited release, which is based on 22 months of charting the sky. The new data includes […]

India has successfully conducted the satellite launch needed to re-construct its Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). The Indian Space Research Organisation’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C41 ascended on Thursday, April 12th. Atop the craft was a satellite designated IRNSS-1L, the last of seven satellites in India’s constellation of navigational craft. India understands that satellite […]

The supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our galaxy appears to have a lot of company, according to a new study that suggests the monster is surrounded by about 10,000 other black holes. For decades, scientists have thought that black holes should sink to the center of galaxies and accumulate there, says Chuck […]

A SpaceX rocket ripped a humongous hole in Earth’s ionosphere during a launch in California last year and may have impaired GPS satellites. The Falcon 9 rocket was blasted from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 24 August last year. It was carrying the Formosat-5, an Earth observation satellite, built by the Taiwan’s National Space Organization. […]

The European Space Agency has hailed the successful test of an air-breathing engine that works in space. The engines don’t need the oxygen found in air to burn. Instead, as the ESA has explained here, the idea is to collect air, compress it, give it a charge and then squirt it out to provide thrust. […]

During a press conference after liftoff, Musk said it was dicey whether the second stage would power up at all. The fuel could have frozen, the oxygen boiled off, or the avionics failed, as the rocket spent more than five hours in our planet’s high-radiation Van Allen belts before firing up. Usually spacecraft punch through […]

KAGOSHIMA – Japan successfully launched on Saturday the world’s smallest satellite-carrying rocket following a failed attempt in January last year, the nation’s space agency said. The rocket about the size of a utility pole, measuring 10 meters in length and 50 centimeters in diameter, lifted off from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture and […]

The Kepler Space Telescope has found oodles of exoplants, but now astroboffins have spotted the first exoplanets outside our galaxy. A group of astroboffins from the University of Oklahoma has become the first to demonstrate exoplanet observations in another galaxy – one that’s 3.8 billion light years away, or one-third of the distance across the […]

Over the past week the station has been dedicated to an S-band scan looking for new targets and refreshing the frequency list, triggered by the recent launch of the mysterious ZUMA mission. This tends to be a semi-annual activity as it can eat up a lot of observing resources even with much of the data […]

They found that planets in the same planetary system have correlated sizes. “Each planet is more likely to be the size of its neighbor than a size drawn at random from the distribution of observed planet sizes,” the paper said. If the system contains three or more planets, the planets are also more likely to […]

Bacteria found on the outside of the International Space station could be alien life, according to a cosmonaut who has visited the satellite. Spacewalkers regularly take samples and materials from the outside of the station when they head outside for what are officially called “extravehicular activity”. Those samples are then taken down to scientists on […]

Planetary Habitability Laboratory

At Planet, we’ve been pursuing Mission 1: to image the entire Earth’s landmass every day. I couldn’t be more excited to announce that we have achieved our founding mission.Six years ago, our team started in a garage in Cupertino. Mission 1 was the north star: we needed to build the satellites and systems, secure the […]

Our Asgardia-1 satellite was launched successfully today from the Wallops launch site in Virginia, USA.Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, Asgardia’s Head of Nation, accompanied by members of his administration personally witnessed the launch.We are delighted to announce therefore that the Asgardia space kingdom has now established its sovereign territory in space.Congratulations to all Asgardians! Source: Asgardia – […]

Organohalogens, a class of molecules that contain at least one halogen atom bonded to carbon, are abundant on the Earth where they are mainly produced through industrial and biological processes1. Consequently, they have been proposed as biomarkers in the search for life on exoplanets2. Simple halogen hydrides have been detected in interstellar sources and in […]

FalconSAT-3 was built in 2005 and 2006 by cadets and faculty in the Space Systems Research Center at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. In amateur service the downlink is at 435.103 MHz transmitting 1W into a ¼ whip that extends from a corner of the satellite near the Lightband separation ring. […]

The entire NASA image and video library is now searchable online! NASA Image and Video Library Source: NASA Image and Video Library

After decades of tinkering, Peter Beck and Rocket Lab are poised to bring low-cost launches to the world. Source: At 18, He Strapped a Rocket Engine to His Bike. Now He’s Taking on SpaceX As opposed to running a company on insane working hours and crazy project changes, this guy is launching rockets at $5m […]

A black hole with three billion times the mass of the Sun has been found hurtling out of its parent galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour! What could give it that kind of incredible boost? Turns out, it’s something even more incredible: the two supermassive black holes that merged to form it in the first place. […]

Pluto fans are attempting to reignite a contentious astronomy debate: What is a planet? […] Is Pluto a planet? It’s not a question scientists ask in polite company. “It’s like religion and politics,” said Kirby Runyon, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “People get worked up over it. I’ve gotten worked up over it.” […]

Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. They were detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Three of them lie in the habitable zone and could harbour water, increasing the possibility that the system could play host to life. It has both […]