Image: Gateway blueprint

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 29, 2023
On Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022, a pulse of intense radiation swept through the solar system so exceptional that astronomers quickly dubbed it the BOAT - the brightest of all time. The source was a gamma-ray burst (GRB), the most powerful class of explosions in the universe. The burst triggered detectors on numerous spacecraft, and observatories around the globe followed up. After combing th

Columbus OH (SPX) Mar 30, 2023
Much like how wind plays a key role in life on Earth by sweeping seeds, pollen and more from one place to another, galactic winds - high-powered streams of charged particles and gases - can change the chemical make-up of the host galaxies they form in, simply by blowing in a specific direction. Using observations made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a new study details how these energ

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Mar 29, 2023
A white dwarf star can explode as a supernova when its mass exceeds the limit of about 1.4 solar masses. A team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching and involving the University of Bonn has now found a binary star system in which matter flows onto the white dwarf from its companion. The system was found due to bright, so-called super-soft X-rays, which o

Denver CO (SPX) Mar 29, 2023
Crescent Space Services has announced its entry into the lunar infrastructure sector. Crescent Space is a new commercial company launched by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) that provides infrastructure-as-a-service for lunar missions. As humankind expands its presence beyond low-Earth orbit, one of the first key challenges is uninterrupted communications between Earth, the Moon, and the growin

Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 30, 2023
NASA's Psyche mission, which will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, is on track to launch in October 2023 after a one-year delay to complete critical testing. The launch period will open Oct. 5 and close Oct. 25. The asteroid, which lies in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may be the remains of a core of a planetesimal, a building block of a roc

Bay St. Louis MS (SPX) Mar 29, 2023
As NASA prepares for the first crewed Artemis missions to the Moon, agency propulsion and test teams are setting their sights on future Space Launch System (SLS) flights and working to improve one of the world's most powerful and reliable rocket engines for missions beginning with Artemis V. A series of hot fire certification tests is in progress at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St.

Durham UK (SPX) Mar 29, 2023
A team of astronomers has discovered one of the biggest black holes ever found, taking advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. The team, led by Durham University, UK, used gravitational lensing - where a foreground galaxy bends the light from a more distant object and magnifies it - and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC facility, which enabled the team to closely e

Munich, Germany (SPX) Mar 30, 2023
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner, astronomers have discovered a large reservoir of hot gas in the still-forming galaxy cluster around the Spiderweb galaxy - the most distant detection of such hot gas yet. Galaxy clusters are some of the largest objects known in the Universe and this result, published in Nature, further reveals just how earl

Minneapolis MN (SPX) Mar 21, 2023
University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers, along with a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have developed a breakthrough process for making spintronic devices that has the potential to become the new industry standard for semiconductors chips that make up computers, smartphones, and many other electronics. The new process will allow for faster, more efficien