Copernical Team
Mysterious hydrogen-free supernova sheds light on stars' violent death throes
A curiously yellow pre-supernova star has caused astrophysicists to re-evaluate what's possible at the deaths of our Universe's most massive stars. The team describe the peculiar star and its resulting supernova in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the
Johns Hopkins Scientists Model Saturn's Interior
New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn's interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet's magnetic field. The models, published this week in AGU Advances, also indicate that Saturn's interior may feature higher temperatures at the equatorial region, with lower temperatures at the high latitudes at the top of the helium ra
A new window to see hidden side of magnetized universe
New observations and simulations show that jets of high-energy particles emitted from the central massive black hole in the brightest galaxy in galaxy clusters can be used to map the structure of invisible inter-cluster magnetic fields. These findings provide astronomers with a new tool for investigating previously unexplored aspects of clusters of galaxies. As clusters of galaxies grow
Illuminating the Cosmic Dark Ages with a Lunar radio telescope
The early-stage NASA concept could see robots hang wire mesh in a crater on the Moon's far side, creating a radio telescope to help probe the dawn of the universe. After years of development, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) project has been awarded $500,000 to support additional work as it enters Phase II of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. While not yet a NASA mission
Juice arrives at ESA's technical heart
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has come 'home' to ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands to undergo an extreme environment test in Europe's largest thermal vacuum chamber to prepare for its journey to the outer Solar System. The spacecraft arrived at ESTEC, ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre, from Airbus Friedrichshafen in Germany last week. It is now being unpa
Volcanoes on Mars could be active, raise possibility of recent habitable conditions
Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Mars shows that eruptions could have taken place within the past 50,000 years, a paper by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist David Horvath says. Most volcanism on the red planet occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago, with smaller eruptions in isolated locales continuing perhaps as recently as 3 million years ago. But, until now, ther
Why Ingenuity's fifth flight will be different
Around the time of our first flight, we talked a lot about having our "Wright brothers moment" at Mars. And that makes a lot of sense, since those two mechanically-minded bicycle builders executed the first powered, controlled flight on Earth, and we were fortunate enough to do the same 117 years later - on another planet. But the comparisons shouldn't stop with a first flight. Ingenuity's
"I felt really heavy:" astronauts describe returning to Earth on SpaceX capsule
Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth's atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA's first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years. "There was a point where I was just saying
Starliner completes full space station mission simulation
NASA and Boeing recently completed an integrated mission dress rehearsal of Starliner's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The campaign conducted largely inside Boeing's Houston-based Avionics and Software Integration Lab (ASIL) culminated in a five-day end-to-end mission simulation known as the ASIL Mission Rehea
Lunar crater radio telescope: Illuminating the cosmic dark ages
After years of development, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) project has been awarded $500,000 to support additional work as it enters Phase II of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. While not yet a NASA mission, the LCRT describes a mission concept that could transform humanity's view of the cosmos.
The LCRT's primary objective would be to measure the long-wavelength radio waves generated by the cosmic Dark Ages—a period that lasted for a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, but before the first stars blinked into existence. Cosmologists know little about this period, but came the answers to some of science's biggest mysteries may be locked in the long-wavelength radio emissions generated by the gas that would have filled the universe during that time.
"While there were no stars, there was ample hydrogen during the universe's Dark Ages—hydrogen that would eventually serve as the raw material for the first stars," said Joseph Lazio, radio astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and a member of the LCRT team.