A previously unknown 100–200-metre asteroid — roughly the size of Rome’s Colosseum — has been detected by an international team of European astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their project used data from the calibration of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), in which the team serendipitously detected an interloping asteroid. The object is likely the smallest observed to date by Webb and may be an example of an object measuring under 1 kilometer in length within the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. More observations are needed to better characterize this object’s nature and properties.

Image: Orion blueprint

World View, the stratospheric ballooning company that announced plans to go public last month, is emphasizing remote sensing, and not tourism, as its primary market for the next several years.

Washington DC (UPI) Feb 5, 2021
SpaceX will delay the launch of the Hispasat Amazonas Nexus mission until Monday at 5:32 p.m. EST, after unfavorable weather conditions held up Sunday's planned launch. The rocket was scheduled to lift off at 5:32 p.m. EST on Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It was initially delayed by two hours as conditions were 30% favorable for lift off, SpaceX said. It was

Yorktown Heights NY (SPX) Feb 03, 2023
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center have announced a collaboration to use IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover new insights in NASA's massive trove of Earth and geospatial science data. The joint work will apply AI foundation model technology to NASA's Earth-observing satellite data for the first time. Foundation models are types of AI models that a

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 03, 2023
Creeping from just a finger's width up to a few feet per year, slow-moving landslides occur naturally throughout the world. They typically are detected inching downslope in rocky areas with high seasonal precipitation and clay-rich soil, and they can take months to years - even centuries - to develop. Yet they can also bring sudden violence. Thousands of landslides are flowing, slipping, topplin

Cambridge UK (SPX) Feb 03, 2023
A collaboration between scientists at Cambridge and UCL has led to the discovery of a new form of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other and may hold the key to understanding this most famous of liquids. The new form of ice is amorphous. Unlike ordinary crystalline ice where the molecules arrange themselves in a regular pattern, in amorphous ice the molecules are in a

Boston MA (SPX) Feb 03, 2023
If she hits just the right pitch, a singer can shatter a wine glass. The reason is resonance. While the glass may vibrate slightly in response to most acoustic tones, a pitch that resonates with the material's own natural frequency can send its vibrations into overdrive, causing the glass to shatter. Resonance also occurs at the much smaller scale of atoms and molecules. When particles che

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 03, 2023
The drive in our last plan took us to an area that appeared somewhat smoother and brighter from orbit (as well as from drive direction imaging) on the so-called "Marker band" that we have been investigating. The Marker band was identified as of interest prior to Curiosity landing within Gale crater owing to its distinct texture and appearance from orbit within the layers of rock that make up Mou

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 03, 2023
Mars clouds are very much like Earth's cirrus clouds but thinner. While Earth clouds can contain liquid water, the low temperatures and pressures on Mars only allow for water-ice (and CO2 ice) clouds to form. However, these water-ice clouds are optically thin because of the low amounts of water present in the Martian atmosphere; if all the water were on the surface, it would make a layer thinner