Space News & Blog Articles

Astronomers have used machine learning to sharpen up the Event Horizon Telescope’s first picture of a black hole — an exercise that demonstrates the value of artificial intelligence for fine-tuning cosmic observations.

When low to medium-mass stars exhaust their supply of hydrogen, they exit their main sequence phase and expand to become red giants – what is known as the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase. Stars in this phase of their evolution become variable (experiences changes in brightness) to shed their outer lays, spreading dust throughout the interstellar medium (ISM) that is crucial to the development of planetary nebulas and protoplanetary systems. For decades, astronomers have sought to better understand the role Red Giant stars play.

Testing the possibility of models of gravity different from general relativity may be closer to home than we think. A team of researchers has proposed that we might be able to use seismic motions in the Earth itself to test for modified gravity.

Spaceflight takes a serious toll on the human body. As NASA’s Twin Study demonstrates, long-duration stays in space lead to muscle and bone density loss. There are also notable effects on the cardiovascular, central nervous, and endocrine systems, as well as changes in gene expression and cognitive function. There’s also visual impairment, known as Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS), which many astronauts reported after spending two months aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This results from increased intracranial pressure that places stress on the optic nerve and leads to temporary blindness.

Using data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), planetary scientists have created one of the most unique and detailed maps of Mars ever. But fair warning, the biggest version of this is a could overload your computer.  

Primordial holes formed in the exotic conditions of the big bang may have become their own source of matter and radiation.

The first solar eclipse of 2023 will span Australia and southeast Asia into the Pacific Ocean region.

Our planet hasn’t always been the warm, inviting place we know today. At least five times in its history, Earth froze over, locked in the grip of an ice age. Scientists sometimes refer to these periods as “Snowball Earth.” The popular idea is that everything was covered with ice, making life difficult, if not impossible. But, there’s new evidence that during at least one of these icy periods, parts of Earth’s surface could have been more like a giant mushy ball of slush.

How did the most massive stars form? Astronomers have debated their origins for decades. One of the biggest problems facing these theories is the lack of observations. Massive stars are relatively rare, and so it’s hard to catch them in the act of formation. But new observations of the so-called Dragon cloud may hold the clue to answering this mystery.

Access to space is getting easier and more accessible as more and more platforms are coming online that can significantly decrease the cost of getting into Earth’s orbit or even beyond. Now, another company has taken a step forward in making inexpensive, reusable access to space a reality. Dawn Aerospace, which operates out of the US, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, has successfully tested a prototype spaceplane.

Amanda Morris, a press release writer at Northwestern University, describes an important astronomical effect in terms entertaining enough to be worth reposting here: “The cosmos would look a lot better if the Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t photobombing it all the time.” That’s certainly one way to describe the air’s effect on astronomical observations, and it’s annoying enough to astronomers that they constantly have to correct for distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere, even at the most advanced observatories at the highest altitudes. Now a team from Northwestern and Tsinghua Universities have developed an AI-based tool to allow astronomers to automatically remove the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere from pictures taken for their research.

Saturn’s rings are one of the most well-known features throughout astronomy. While much is known about them, they still make headlines from time to time. This includes a recent study involving an international team of researchers that could help paint a clearer picture of the interaction between the gas giant and the massive ring system that encircles it.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most powerful and sophisticated observatory ever built. It is also the most expensive, owing to the complexity of its design and the rigorous testing this entailed. To ensure the telescope could fit into its payload fairing, NASA engineers designed the JWST to fold up (origami-style) and unfold once it reached space. It is little wonder why astronomers and astrophysicists hope to develop flexible, lightweight materials that can maintain the perfect shape and be folded up to fit compactly inside a launch vehicle.

Some parts of the solar system are exceptionally hard to reach. Despite the interesting scientific data we could collect from that location, we’ve never managed to send a probe to one of the poles of the Sun. Nor have we been able to send many spacecraft to exciting places in the Oort cloud of other parts of the outer solar system. Voyager 1, which currently holds the record for being the farthest craft away from Earth, took over 40 years to reach the point where it is now. Even if it did pass by something interesting on its way, its antiquated scientific equipment would be less useful than more modern technology.

On Thursday, March 30th, NASA’s Perseverance rover drilled and stored the first rock core sample of its newest science campaign. This is the sixteenth sample the rover has taken as part of the ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a collaborative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to retrieve Perseverance’s samples and bring them back to Earth. Once they arrive (expected to happen by 2033), scientists will analyze them using state-of-the-art machinery too heavy and cumbersome to send to Mars as part of a robotic mission.

Astronomers have developed a way to cheaply and easily measure the radiation exposure experienced by airline crews over Africa.

Ready for another stunning image from JWST? How about a peek inside a supernova remnant? Not just any stellar debris, but a highly detailed view of the leftovers from the explosion that created Cassiopeia A. The latest image is giving astronomers an up-close and personal look at what happened to a supermassive star some 11,000 light-years away from us. It may also help answer questions about the existence of cosmic dust, particularly in the early Universe.

All stars are born from the collapse of clouds of dust and gas. But triggering star formation is a tricky process, because these gas clouds can just hang out doing nothing for billions of years. A pair of researchers have found a precise recipe for getting gas clouds to trigger star formation. It involves a lot of collision.

Some of the most exciting things that happen in a telescope’s lifetime are its data releases. Gaia, which has been operating since 2013, recently released its third major dataset, and astronomers that weren’t intimately involved in the operation and planning for the project have had some time to pull over. Their studies are starting to pop up in journals everywhere. For example, a new one from a research team, mainly from Guangzhou University, catalogs over 1100 new star clusters, significantly increasing the overall total of these critical components in the structure of the Milky Way.

The massive Kepler survey found a treasure trove of exoplanets. But in all that wealth they found three anomalies: what appeared to be rings of dust surrounding stars where planets should be. They were rocky planets in the process of being obliterated. And a team of astronomers that found a way to use these gory sites to understand some of the most mysterious and hard to detect planets in the universe.

Astronomers are currently searching for signs of life in the “habitable zones” of nearby stars, which is defined as the band around a star where liquid water can potentially exist. But a recent paper argues that we need to take a more nuanced and careful approach, based not on the potential for life, but the potential for computation.