Jiuquan (XNA) Sep 27, 2023
China on Wednesday sent its latest remote sensing satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The satellite, Yaogan-33 04, was launched on a Long March-4C carrier rocket at 4:15 am (Beijing Time), and has entered its planned orbit successfully. It will be used for scientific experiments, land resource surveys, crop yield estimates, and disaster p

Hampton VA (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
CALIPSO, a lidar satellite that advanced the world's understanding of climate, weather, and air quality, ended its scientific mission on Aug. 1, 2023. Across 17 years of operation, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation recorded more than 10 billion lidar measurements and informed thousands of scientific reports. CALIPSO was launched jointly by NASA and the F

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
A new movie made from over two decades of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows a famous star system changing with time, as described in our latest press release. Eta Carinae contains two massive stars (one is about 90 times the mass of the Sun and the other is believed to be about 30 times the Sun's mass). In the middle of the 19th century, skywatchers observed as Eta Carinae e

West Lafayette IN (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
China, India and the U.S. have all achieved landing on the Moon in the 2020s. Once there, their eventual goal is to set up a base. But a successful base - along with the spacecraft that will carry people to it - must be habitable for humans. And a big part of creating a habitable base is making sure the heating and cooling systems work. That's especially true because the ambient temp

Seattle WA (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
The International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory and Privateer Space, a leader in space decision intelligence and data infrastructure, announced a partnership to bring additional resources to the growing space economy. The announcement was made during a session at the annual ISS Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC) focused on companies innovating within the space landscape.

Columbus OH (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
Lava worlds, massive exoplanets home to sparkling skies and roiling volcanic seas called magma oceans, are distinctly unlike the planets in our solar system. To date, nearly 50% of all rocky exoplanets yet discovered have been found capable of maintaining magma on their surfaces, likely because these planets are so close to their host stars they orbit in fewer than 10 days. Being so close

Houston TX (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
In 2018, the scientists Adam Frank and Gavin Schmidt proposed the Silurian hypothesis. It considered the potential of finding ancient evidence in Earth's geologic record that a non-human industrial civilization could exist on Earth millions of years ago. But could any outcomes of the technogenic activities of such a civilization survive until present day? Irina K. Romanovskaya, who is a graduate

Nottingham UK (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has shown that an exoplanet around a star in the constellation Leo has some of the chemical markers that, on Earth, are associated with living organisms. But these are vague indications. So how likely is it that this exoplanet harbours alien life? Exoplanets are worlds that orbit stars other than the Sun. The planet in question is named K2-18

Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
In a solar system called TRAPPIST-1, 40 light years from the sun, seven Earth-sized planets revolve around a cold star. Astronomers obtained new data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on TRAPPIST-1 b, the planet in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system closest to its star. These new observations offer insights into how its star can affect observations of exoplanets in the habitable zone of cool s

Houston TX (SPX) Sep 27, 2023
NASA scientists found black dust and debris on the avionics deck of the OSIRIS-REx science canister when the initial lid was removed today. The canister from the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule was delivered to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Sept. 25 after landing in the Utah desert on Sept. 24. Johnson houses the world's largest collection of astromaterials, and curation exper