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New star activity catalog could sharpen hunt for habitable worlds
Searching for habitable worlds beyond our solar system involves more than having a planet orbit within its star's habitable zone, the region where temperatures could be just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. On Earth, where water comprises approximately 75% of the planet's surface, life is abundant. But what about the exoplanet's star, specifically its activity and rotation? How could this influence how exoplanets are identified for current and future missions?
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Cosmic dust could play key role in cracking long-standing mystery of solar corona heating
A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly influence how energy moves through the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun. The discovery potentially rewrites how scientists understand why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun itself.
Report links Starliner problems to overconfidence and unrealistic schedules
A new report links the long-running technical problems with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle to a combination of overconfidence, unrealistic schedules and NASA’s lack of insight into the vehicle. The post Report links Starliner problems to overconfidence and unrealistic schedules appeared first on SpaceNews.
Steven Spielberg sci-fi movies ranked, worst to best
Disclosure Day has arrived in cinemas, and it's got us nostalgic for all Steven Spielberg's best directorial sci-fi movies to date.
Nautilus array to track missing exoplanet atmospheres
Exoplanet atmospheres have become prime targets for astrobiologists in the search for life beyond Earth. This is because exoplanet surfaces can't be directly imaged yet, so astronomers must get creative in how they search for signs of life, also called biosignatures. Presently, powerful ground- and space-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are improving in their ability to observe and analyze exoplanet atmospheres
NASA’s Chandra Examines Milky Way at Arms’ Length
A new result using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows that the outer spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy may reach wider than previously thought. This finding may lead astronomers to adjust their understanding of our home galaxy’s structure. A team of astronomers made this discovery by making precise measurements of distances to dust clouds […]
Watch Atlas V rocket launch 29 Amazon Leo broadband satellites early on July 2
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch 29 Amazon Leo internet satellites to orbit from Florida early Thursday morning (July 2), and you can watch it live.
FCC to vote on satellite licensing overhaul July 22
The FCC is set to vote July 22 on an order to overhaul its satellite application process, creating a “licensing assembly line” to keep up with increasingly large and complex constellation plans. The post FCC to vote on satellite licensing overhaul July 22 appeared first on SpaceNews.
TESS just found a planet in a new way—and more may be hiding in its eight years of data
For the first time, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to its warping of space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound microlensing world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star.
'Rocket's Red Glare': How NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission celebrated America's 250th birthday
NASA joined in the semiquincentennial celebrations this year by painting "America 250" on the rocket that launched the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon.
A new CRASH clock measures the chance of satellite collisions, and it's ticking down fast
Imagine a piece of space debris the size of a hockey puck slams into a Starlink satellite at about 10 kilometers per second. The kinetic energy is equivalent to 2 kilograms of TNT, or a fully loaded semitruck traveling at 100 kilometers an hour.
This weird 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet has a hotspot in the wrong place, and astronomers aren't sure how
Astronomers have discovered a curious new exoplanet that challenges assumptions about hot Jupiters, some of the most extreme planets in the universe.
The universe is less uniform than we thought—cosmology may need a radical rethink
Modern cosmology rests on a simple assumption: If we look on large enough scales, matter should be distributed evenly, with no preferred direction within the cosmos. This is known as the cosmological principle.
The growing number of satellites in orbit could soon make telescopes obsolete. 'For astronomy, this would obviously be catastrophic'
If the number of satellites in Earth's orbit exceeds 100,000, humanity may lose its ability to study the universe from the planet's surface. Some companies want to put millions into space.
13,000 tons of space junk clutters Earth orbit. Here's how it could be cleaned up
Seventy years ago, Earth had only one satellite: the moon. Now it has more than 15,000—about 10,000 of which are owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX. The world's first trillionaire plans to launch 1 million more satellites, each roughly 70 meters (230 feet) long and 20 meters (66 feet) wide, that would form a data center megaconstellation.
XMM-Newton and Chandra help revise distance to Milky Way's outer spiral arms
The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the distance to these echoes, they found the outer arms to be up to 10% farther away than previously thought.
NASA Seeks Volunteers for New Yearlong Simulated Moon, Mars Mission
NASA is recruiting research participants for the agency’s next simulated deep space mission. Beginning no earlier than August 2027, research volunteers will spend one year living and working in interplanetary environments at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, operating under isolated conditions expected during crewed missions to the Moon or Red Planet. Insights from this […]
July's planetary lineup is changing — and Venus is the last one standing
Venus dominates the evening sky while Saturn, Mars and Uranus put on a show for early risers.
Martian dust storms may generate atmospheric electrical conditions that could impact future missions
A new study by a doctoral researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), part of The University of Alabama System, suggests global dust storms on Mars may organize the Martian atmosphere into regions favorable for electrical activity, increasing the potential for electrostatic discharges that could affect missions to the red planet by interfering with electronics, causing arcing between conductive surfaces, and damaging exposed scientific instruments and spacecraft systems. The res
LINK Spacecraft Set for Mission to Boost NASA’s Swift Observatory
A first-of-its-kind mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Thursday, July 2, 5:09 a.m. EDT (9:09 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. A robotic servicing spacecraft called LINK, built by Katalyst Space, will blast […]
ESA outlines high-tech lander instruments for 2050 Enceladus
Saturn's moon Enceladus has become a prime solar system target for astrobiologists. This is because the small moon, which is just over 10% the diameter of Earth's moon, harbors a vast subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust. This subsurface ocean, combined with the geysers at Enceladus' south pole that discharge bits of this ocean into the void, provides scientists with a treasure trove of opportunities for scientific research into whether Enceladus could harbor ingredients for lif
Orbit overload could devastate astronomy if 1.7 million proposed satellites brighten night sky
A new European Southern Observatory (ESO) study has found that current proposals to launch more than 1.7 million satellites into orbit, including extremely bright ones, would have "devastating consequences for astronomy." According to the study, no more than 100,000 faint satellites, below naked-eye visibility, should orbit Earth to safeguard our ability to observe the night sky with modern telescopes.
How a giant planet survived its star's death, then migrated inward
When astronomers discovered a giant planet orbiting a dead star in 2020, they wondered how it survived its star's violent demise. Now, observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may finally explain the planet's unlikely escape from destruction.
NASA’s Webb Studies How Planet Survived Death of its Star
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving us new insight into the far-future of solar systems like our own, as the agency continues to reveal the secrets of the universe and our place in it. Billions of years ago, a Sun-like star nearing the end of its life swelled tremendously in size to become a […]