Tokyo (AFP) Jan 22, 2024
Japan switched off its Moon lander almost three hours after a historic touchdown to allow for a possible recovery of the craft when the sun hits its solar panels, the space agency said Monday. With its unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission - dubbed "Moon Sniper" for the craft's precision landing capabilities - Japan became the fifth country to achieve a soft lunar lan

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jan 23, 2024
China is poised to take another significant step in lunar exploration with its upcoming Chang'e 6 mission, scheduled for later this year. This ambitious endeavor by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) aims to collect and return samples from the far side of the Moon, a feat not yet accomplished by any nation. The Chang'e 6 spacecraft, a complex assembly comprising an orbiter, lan

London, UK (SPX) Jan 23, 2024
The realm of space exploration is on the verge of a significant advancement with the introduction of the Aqualunar Challenge, a collaborative GBP1.2 million initiative between the UK and Canada, aimed at fostering the development of technologies for purifying water on the Moon. This challenge is a testament to the growing focus on making human habitation on the lunar surface a viable reality.

Berkeley CA (SPX) Jan 23, 2024
Nearly 70 years after the launch of the first satellite, we still have more questions than answers about space. But a team of Berkeley researchers is on a mission to change this with a proposal to build a fleet of low-cost, autonomous spacecraft, each weighing only 10 grams and propelled by nothing more than the pressure of solar radiation. These miniaturized solar sails could potentially visit

Newark DE (SPX) Jan 23, 2024
Lettuce and other leafy green vegetables are part of a healthy, balanced diet - even for astronauts on a mission. It's been more than three years since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration made space-grown lettuce an item on the menu for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Alongside their space diet staples of flour tortillas and powdered coffee, astronauts can munch

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This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionised, captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).

N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning roughly 1630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwest region of the LMC. N79 is typically regarded as a younger version of 30 Doradus (also known as the Tarantula Nebula), another of Webb’s recent targets. Research suggests that N79 has a star formation efficiency

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jan 18, 2024
Some of the finest, smallest details in the universe - the gaps between elongated groups of stars - may soon help astronomers reveal dark matter in greater detail than ever before. After NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, by May 2027, researchers will use its images to explore what exists between looping tendrils of stars that are pulled from globular clusters. Specifically, they

Munster, Germany (SPX) Jan 19, 2024
Our Earth's Moon is almost completely covered in dust. Unlike on Earth, this dust is not smoothed by wind and weather, but is sharp-edged and also electrostatically charged. This dust has been studied since the Apollo era at the end of the 1960s. Now, an international research team led by Dr. Ottaviano Rusch from the University of Munster has for the first time discovered anomalous meter-sized r

Manchester UK (SPX) Jan 19, 2024
An international team of astronomers have found a new and unknown object in the Milky Way that is heavier than the heaviest neutron stars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest black holes known. Using the MeerKAT Radio Telescope, astronomers from a number of institutions including The University of Manchester and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany foun

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 21, 2024
The first flight of NASA's commercial lunar delivery service carrying agency science and technology, as well as other customer payloads intended for the Moon, has come to an end. After 10 days and 13 hours in space, Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission One made a controlled re-entry on Earth over open water in the South Pacific at approximately 4:04 p.m. EST on Jan. 18. Astrobotic was the first