NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying star. The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the moon. This stellar “cannon fire” has continued once Read more about Hubble detects giant ‘cannonballs’ shooting from star[…]
In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station. China’s Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the Read more about China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth[…]
Rosetta’s dust-analysing COSIMA (COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser) instrument has made the first unambiguous detection of solid organic matter in the dust particles ejected by Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in the form of complex carbon-bearing molecules. While organics had already been detected in situ on the comet’s surface by instruments on-board Philae and from orbit by Rosetta’s Read more about Rosetta catches dusty organics[…]
Adam Frank from the University of Rochester and Woodruff Sullivan from the University of Washington based their new equation on the Drake equation, used for calculating the probability of extraterrestrial civilisation, written by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961. Source: Are we alone in the universe? Not likely, according to math
A group of researchers are studying how all the galaxies in the universe are connected, network-style. Source: Interconnectedness of the galaxies You can explore the network models here
The volumes will be based on the Bigelow Aerospace B330 expandable module with the initial launch to orbit in 2020 on ULA’s Atlas V 552 configuration launch vehicle. The B330 will have 330 cubic meters (12,000 cu ft) of internal space. The craft will support zero-gravity research including scientific missions and manufacturing processes. Beyond its Read more about Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance announce plans for inflatable space station modules[…]
Last year, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence got a major boost when Russian billionaire Yuri Milner unveiled a $100 million effort to scan the skies for radio and light signals emitted by aliens. Not content to simply sit tight and wait for ET to hail us, Milner now plans to build interstellar spacecraft. Yes, you Read more about Stephen Hawking and a Russian Billionaire Want to Build tiny Interstellar Starships[…]
The most recent finding from New Horizons show that ice bergs have broken off from the hills surrounding the Sputnik Planum, a glacier of nitrogen ice, and are floating slowly across its surface, eventually to cluster together in places like the Challenger Colles, informally named after the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which was Read more about NASA announces that Pluto has icebergs floating on glaciers of nitrogen ice[…]
On 26 January at 12:49 a.m. MST, the 2nd Space Operations Squadron at the 50th Space Wing, Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., verified users were experiencing GPS timing issues. Furtheri nvestigation revealed an issue in the Global Positioning System ground software which only affected the time on legacy L-band signals. This change occurred when the Read more about GPS was broken for a while[…]
Source: File:Observable universe logarithmic illustration.png – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If the black hole is spinning, it can generate strong jets that blast across thousands of light-years and shape entire galaxies. These black hole engines are thought to be powered by magnetic fields. For the first time, astronomers have detected magnetic fields just outside the event horizon of the black hole at the center of Read more about Event Horizon Telescope reveals magnetic fields at Milky Way’s central black hole[…]
Commercial spaceflight start-up Blue Origin has achieved a historic first by vertically landing and recovering the launcher stage of the New Shepard suborbital system after delivering a payload to space. Source: Historic touchdown for Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle
Satellites are being weaponised, with the anti-satellite missles, manoevering satellites that can hit other objects and satellites that hack into feeds, giving false information to the receiver. Countriies have been holding on to a balance for ages, but in the last 10 or so years, countries have been gradually upping their game. Source: Satellite wars Read more about Satellite wars – an analysis of the arms race in space[…]
NASA took a significant step Friday toward expanding research opportunities aboard the International Space Station with its first mission order from Hawthorne, California based-company SpaceX to launch astronauts from U.S. soil. Source: NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station | NASA
Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the Universe. Some of these galaxies formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang and are fainter than any other galaxy yet uncovered by Hubble. The team has Read more about Galaxies formed just after Big Bang viewed[…]
NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.” The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the Read more about NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth[…]
Except Escape Dynamics didn’t fire its engine by setting alight fuel in a controlled explosion, like a traditional rocket. Instead, their engine fired using power beamed at it from a microwave antenna across the room. ]…] It aims to use a giant set of batteries to draw power from the regular electric grid (or on Read more about Rockets powered by microwave beams[…]
Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL. The website updates daily with orbit data from Space-Track.org and uses the excellent satellite.js Javascript library to calculate satellite positions. Source: Stuff in Space
Basically the US is saying that it’s the wild west out in space: if you can get there, you can mine your asteroid. Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources Source: Text of H.R. 1508: Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015 (Introduced version) Read more about US Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015[…]
The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the plane breaking apart. One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. Friday’s flight marked Read more about Spaceship Two breaks up in flight[…]
A very cheap mission has managed to park into Mars Orbit first time, something never before done. Congratulations India! ISRO: Mars Orbiter Mission.
at 4,268px × 5,690px it’s a huge starship guide featuring hundreds of spacecraft to scale. Size Comparison – Science Fiction Spaceships by DirkLoechel on deviantART.
How did the Moon form? According to the prevailing hypothesis, a Mars-sized body known as Theia smashed into Earth. Herwartz et al. analyzed fresh basalt samples from three Apollo landing sites and compared them with several samples of Earth’s mantle. The oxygen isotope values measured in these lunar rocks differ significantly from the terrestrial material, Read more about Evidence that the moon was formed by impact between Earth and planet Theia[…]
Very quickly! Will it only be a few decades until it’s gone? HubbleSite – NewsCenter – Hubble Shows that Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Smaller than Ever Seen Before (05/15/2014) – Introduction.
Last month, physicists used this idea to build the world’s first entanglement-enhanced microscope that dramatically increases its resolution over purely classical instruments. They created entangled photons and used one to illuminate the object. The second photon can then give them information about the first that they use to increase the resolution of the resulting image. Read more about How To Build A Quantum Telescope[…]