Colorful Kuiper Belt puzzle solved by UH researchers
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:37The Kuiper Belt is a massive disk of icy bodies, including Pluto, that is located just outside of Neptune's orbit in our solar system. Objects observed in the Kuiper Belt exhibit a unique color range than any other solar system population ranging from white to dark reddish. While the source of this diversity in colors is unknown, scientists have speculated that it is likely the result of the pro
Astrophysicists confirm the faintest galaxy ever seen in the early universe
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:37An international research team led by UCLA astrophysicists has confirmed the existence of the faintest galaxy ever seen in the early universe. The galaxy, called JD1, is one of the most distant identified to date, and it is typical of the kinds of galaxies that burned through the fog of hydrogen atoms left over from the Big Bang, letting light shine through the universe and shaping it into what
Eventually everything will evaporate, not only black holes
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:37New theoretical research by Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom and Heino Falcke of Radboud University has shown that Stephen Hawking was right about black holes, although not completely. Due to Hawking radiation, black holes will eventually evaporate, but the event horizon is not as crucial as had been believed. Gravity and the curvature of spacetime cause this radiation too. This means
NASA looks back at 50 years of gamma-ray burst science
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:37Fifty years ago, on June 1, 1973, astronomers around the world were introduced to a powerful and perplexing new phenomenon called GRBs (gamma-ray bursts). Today sensors on orbiting satellites like NASA's Swift and Fermi missions detect a GRB somewhere in the sky about once a day on average. Astronomers think the bursts arise from catastrophic occurrences involving stars in distant galaxies, even
Mars Express milestones: two-year mission enters third decade
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:3020 years of Mars Express: Mars as never seen before
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:00A new mosaic of Mars marks 20 years since the launch of ESA's Mars Express, and reveals the planet’s colour and composition in spectacular detail.
Webb peers behind bars
Friday, 02 June 2023 08:00A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
This portrait of NGC 5068 is part of a campaign to create an astronomical treasure trove, a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies. Previous gems from this collection can be seen here and here. These observations are particularly
Boeing's astronaut capsule faces more launch delays after latest problems
Friday, 02 June 2023 07:31Soaring rhetoric: NASA mission will carry Poet Laureate Ada Limón's words to Jupiter
Friday, 02 June 2023 07:2520 years and counting: Mars Express in numbers
Friday, 02 June 2023 07:00Earth from Space: Anchorage, Alaska
Friday, 02 June 2023 07:00Boeing's first crewed space launch delayed, again
Friday, 02 June 2023 05:30Boeing has once again delayed the first crewed flight of its Starliner space capsule after discovering new technical issues, officials said Thursday. The troubled CST-100 Starliner program has experienced numerous postponements but was finally meant to send humans on a test flight to the International Space Station on July 21. During testing, Boeing engineers identified new issues relati
Parachute and wiring issues to delay Starliner crewed test flight
Thursday, 01 June 2023 22:34NASA and Boeing will further delay the first crewed launch of the company’s CST-100 Starliner, which had been scheduled for July, to address two newly discovered issues with the spacecraft.
Northrop Grumman’s ground station for missile warning satellites passes design review
Thursday, 01 June 2023 19:25The Relay Ground Station-Asia (RGS-A) was funded by the U.S.
Space tractor beams may not be the stuff of sci-fi for long
Thursday, 01 June 2023 18:59On Feb. 10, 2009, disaster struck hundreds of miles above the Siberian Peninsula. That evening, a defunct Russian satellite orbiting Earth crashed into a communications satellite called Iridium 33 moving at a speed of thousands of miles per hour. Both spacecraft erupted into a rain of shrapnel, sending more than 1,800 chunks of debris spiraling around the globe.
No other spacecraft (or humans) were harmed, but for many aerospace engineers, the event was a sign of things to come. Space, it seemed, was getting crowded.
NASA estimates that about 23,000 chunks of debris the size of a softball or larger currently swirl through space. All that junk means that another collision like the one that destroyed Iridium 33 becomes increasingly likely every year—only this time, the fallout could be much worse.