Space News & Blog Articles

When NASA astronauts return to the surface of the Moon in the Artemis III mission, the plan is to use a modified SpaceX Starship as their lunar lander. NASA announced last week that SpaceX has now demonstrated an important capability of the vacuum-optimized Raptor engine that will be used for the lander: an extreme cold start.  

A recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal examines how helicopters equipped with a magnetometer could be used to conduct magnetic field investigations within the crust of Mars, providing important insights into the present characteristics and early evolution of the Red Planet. This study comes as NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter continues breaking records and making history as the first powered aerial explorer on another planet, along with the recently expired NASA InSight lander using its own magnetometer to measure the crustal magnetic field.

One of the miracles of modern astronomy is the ability to ‘see’ wavelengths of light that human eyes can’t. Last week, astronomers put that superpower to good use and released five new images showcasing the universe in every wavelength from X-ray to infrared.

Achieving interstellar travel has been the dream of countless generations, but the challenges remain monumental. Aside from the vast distances involved, there are also the prohibitive energy requirements and the sheer cost of assembling spacecraft that could survive the trip. Right now, the best bet for achieving an interstellar mission within a reasonable timeframe (i.e., a single person’s lifetime) is to build gram-scale spacecraft paired with lightsails. Using high-power laser arrays, these spacecraft could be accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light (relativistic speeds) and reach nearby stars in a few decades.

It’s difficult to determine the shape of our galaxy. So difficult that only in the last century did we learn that the Milky Way is just one galaxy among billions. So it’s not surprising that despite all our modern telescopes and spacecraft we are still mapping the shape of our galaxy. And one of the more interesting discoveries is that the Milky Way is warped. One explanation for this is that our galaxy has undergone collisions, but a new study argues that it’s caused by dark matter.

How much “stuff” is there in the Universe? You’d think it would be easy to figure out. But, it’s not. Astronomers add up what they can detect, and still find there’s more to the cosmos than they see. So, what’s “out there” and how do they account for it all?

The thing about a supernova is that you never know when it might occur. Supernovae are triggered either by a collision with another star or when the interior of a massive star becomes depleted of nuclear fuel and begins a rapid collapse. Neither of these show any major optical changes before the explosion, so we are left to scan the sky in the hopes of catching one in its early stages. But that could soon change.

In an age of ever-growing numbers of exoplanets circling other stars, it’s natural that astronomers search for signatures of advanced civilizations. Such signatures may have biological or technological origins.

Yesterday, NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) announced that the summer of 2003 was the hottest on record. This year saw a massive heat wave that swept across much of the world and was felt in South America, Japan, Europe, and the U.S. This exacerbated deadly wildfires in Canada and Hawaii (predominantly on the island of Maui) and are likely to have contributed to severe rainfall in Italy, Greece, and Central Europe. This is the latest in a string of record-setting summers that are the direct result of anthropogenic climate change.

Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) are impossible to ignore. They can be billions of times more massive than the Sun, and when they’re actively consuming stars and gas, they become luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN.) A galaxy’s center is a busy place, with the activity centred on the SMBH.

Methanol is one of our most extensively used raw materials. It’s used as a solvent, a pesticide, and in combination with other chemicals in the manufacture of plastic, clothing, plywood, and in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.

On October 9, 2022, a gamma-ray burst illuminated the solar system. Its light had traveled 2.4 billion years to reach us, having begun its journey when only bacteria and archaea existed on the Earth and oxygen was not yet plentiful in our air. Despite its long journey, the flash of light was tremendously bright.

The winners of the 15th annual “Astronomy Photographer of the Year” competition have been announced at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich England. The annual competition features some of the best space photography taken by amateur astrophotographers from around the world.

Around the Moon’s southern polar region lies the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the single-largest impact basin on the lunar surface. Within this basin, there are numerous permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) that are thought to have trapped water ice over time. These deposits are crucial to future missions like the Artemis Program that will lead to the creation of permanent infrastructure. This water ice will supply crews with a steady source of water for drinking and irrigation and the means for chemically producing oxygen gas and rocket fuel.

The most promising places to look for life in the Solar System are in the ocean moons Europa and Enceladus. But all that warm, salty, potentially life-supporting water is under thick sheets of ice: up to 30 km thick on Europa and up to 40 km thick for Enceladus.

In response to a newly released report from an independent panel, NASA says it has appointed a director in charge of research into UFOs — now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — and will work with other agencies to widen the net for collecting UAP data.

We’re all basking in the success of the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s fulfilling its promise as our most powerful telescope, making all kinds of discoveries that we’ve been anticipating and hoping for. But the JWST’s story is one of broken budgets, repeated requests for more time and money, and near-cancellations.

A neutron star is 2 solar masses compressed into a ball only 12 kilometers wide. Its surface gravity is so immense it compresses atoms and molecules into raw nuclei and squeezes electrons into protons transforming them into neutrons. Given such immense pressures and densities, you might assume neutron stars have an almost perfectly smooth surface. But you’d be wrong because we know that neutron stars can have mountains.

Just like Earth, Saturn goes through seasons because of its axial tilt. But a year on Saturn lasts 30 Earth years, so each of its seasons lasts 7.5 years. Right now, it is late summer on Saturn’s northern hemisphere, so again, just like Earth is currently heading for northern autumn equinox in September, Saturn is heading for northern autumn equinox a little later, in 2025.

Between now and the mid-2030s, multiple space agencies hope to send crewed missions to the Moon. of These plans all involve establishing bases around the Moon’s southern polar region, including the Artemis Base Camp and the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). These facilities will enable a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development,” according to the NASA Artemis Program mission statement. In all cases, plans for building facilities on the surface call for a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), where local resources are used as building materials.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has only been operational for just over a year, but this isn’t stopping the world’s biggest space agency from discussing the next big space telescope that could serve as JWST’s successor sometime in the future. Enter the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which was first proposed as NASA’s next flagship Astrophysics mission during the National Academy of Sciences’ Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020). While its potential technological capabilities include studying exoplanets, stars, galaxies, and a myriad of other celestial objects for life beyond Earth, there’s a long way to go before HWO will be wowing both scientists and the public with breathtaking images and new datasets.