Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 18, 2025
A new study challenges the long-held belief that intelligent life is a rare cosmic accident, proposing instead that humanity's emergence was a predictable outcome of Earth's evolving environment. This shift in perspective, led by researchers at Penn State, suggests that conditions for intelligence may arise naturally on other planets as well. The study disputes the "hard steps" model, a fr

East Lansing MI (SPX) Feb 18, 2025
From helping catalyze interstellar reactions and fueling the birth of stars to its presence in neighborhood gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter, trihydrogen, or H3+, is best known as the "the molecule that made the universe." While we have a clear picture of how the majority of H3+ is formed - a hydrogen molecule, or H2, colliding with its ionized counterpart, H2+ - scientists are keen to u

Boulder CO (SPX) Feb 18, 2025
New Horizons is healthy and continuing to speed outward across the Kuiper Belt. Our spacecraft is 61 times as far from the Sun as Earth, or over 5.5 billion miles from home! Radio signals, traveling to and from New Horizons at the speed of light - about 186,000 miles per second - take about nine hours to cover that distance. New Horizons is about halfway through a hibernation period that

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 18, 2025
Asteroids that pass close to Earth often raise concerns about potential collisions, but they also present valuable opportunities for scientific discovery. One such celestial body, the 900-meter-wide asteroid Ryugu, has recently yielded intriguing evidence that may enhance our understanding of life's building blocks in the Solar System. Scientists from Kyoto University have detected salt mi

The European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to guide the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft through its closest encounter with Venus so far.

Today’s flyby will be the first to significantly ‘tilt’ the spacecraft’s orbit and allow it to see the Sun’s polar regions, which cannot be seen from Earth.

Studying the Sun’s poles will improve our understanding of solar activity, space weather, and the Sun-Earth connection.

Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky.

Image: The pierogi challenge

Baltimore MD (SPX) Feb 16, 2025
Jumping workouts could help astronauts prevent the type of cartilage damage they are likely to endure during lengthy missions to Mars and the Moon, a new Johns Hopkins University study suggests. The research adds to ongoing efforts by space agencies to protect astronauts against deconditioning/getting out of shape due to low gravity, a crucial aspect of their ability to perform spacewalks,

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Feb 16, 2025
Chinese space technology company GalaxySpace has successfully demonstrated mobile-to-satellite communication technology utilizing China's first low-Earth orbit broadband communication test constellation. The demonstration took place during a commercial space conference in Beijing on Wednesday. At precisely 10:28 am, a satellite from the constellation passed over the conference venue, locat

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 16, 2025
As space agencies and private companies design satellites and telescopes with repairability in mind, the need for efficient servicing trajectories becomes crucial. Researchers from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have developed a new method enabling multiple CubeSats to coordinate in servicing and assembling