Space News & Blog Articles

The Starship/Super Heavy is the world’s first fully reusable launch system and the most powerful rocket in history. It is also the key to fulfilling SpaceX’s long-term vision of broadband satellite internet, delivering crews and cargo to the lunar surface, and creating the first self-sustaining city on Mars. After years of development, design changes, and “hop tests” at the company’s launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas, orbital test flights finally began in April last year. The first two flights ended in the loss of both vehicles, though the second flight saw the Starship prototype reach orbit.

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s next generation heavy lift rocket is just months away from its first flight, and its major components are now being assembled for launch at the Vehicle Assembly Building in Kourou, French Guiana.

In 2008, astronomers with the SuperWASP survey spotted WASP-12b as it transited in front of its star. At the time, it was part of a new class of exoplanets (“Hot Jupiters”) discovered a little more than a decade before. However, subsequent observations revealed that WASP-12b was the first Hot Jupiter observed that orbits so closely to its parent star that it has become deformed. While several plausible scenarios have been suggested to explain these observations, a widely accepted theory is that the planet is being pulled apart as it slowly falls into its star.

At the end of their lives, most stars including the Sun will become white dwarfs. After a red dwarf or sun-like star consumes all the hydrogen and helium it can, the remains of the star will collapse under its own weight, shrinking ever more until the quantum pressure of electrons becomes strong enough to counter gravity. White dwarfs begin their days as brilliantly hot embers of degenerate matter and grow ever cooler and dimmer as they age.

The Pentagon office in charge of investigating UFO reports — now known officially as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — today provided its most detailed explanation for what it said were false or misconstrued claims of alien visitations over the decades.

As long as it has existed as a genre, there has been a notable relationship between science fiction and science fact. Since our awareness of the Universe and everything in it has changed with time, so have depictions and representations in popular culture. This includes everything from space exploration and extraterrestrial life to extraterrestrial environments. As scientists keep pushing the boundaries of what is known about the cosmos, their discoveries are being related to the public in film, television, print, and other media.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), human activities have significantly impacted the planet. As global greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide) have continued to increase, so too have global temperatures – with severe ecological consequences. Between 2011 and 2020, global surface temperatures rose by an estimated 1.07 °C (2.01 °F) above the average in 1850–1900. At this rate, temperatures could further increase by 1.5 to 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) in the coming decades, depending on whether we can achieve net zero by 2050.

Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile have now completed one of the largest surveys ever to hunt for planet-forming discs. They were able to find dozens of dusty regions around young stars, directly imaging the swirling gas and dust which hints at the locations of these new worlds.

What to watch for on April 8th as totality sweeps across the continent.

When a galaxy runs out of gas and dust, the process of star birth stops. That takes billions of years. But, there’s a galaxy out there that was already dead when the Universe was only 700 billion years old. What happened to it?

NASA’s Perseverance rover is busy exploring the Martian surface and collecting samples for eventual return to Earth. But the rover recently took some time to gaze upward and observe the heavens. Using Mastcam-Z, the rover’s primary science camera, Perseverance captured Phobos, Deimos, and Mercury as they transited in front of the Sun.

Technosignature research is heating up, with plenty of papers speculating on the nature, and sometimes the longevity, of signals created by technically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. While we haven’t found any so far, that isn’t to say that we won’t, and a better understanding of what to look for would undoubtedly help. Enter a new paper by Amedeo Balbi and Claudio Grimaldi, two professors at the Universita di Roma Tor Vergata and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, respectively. They have taken a statistical model to the problem of understanding how old a technosignature might be before we are likely to find it – and their answer is, surprisingly young.

I always think of planispheres when I think of astrolabes! Navigators used these ancient devices (astrolabes not planispheres) to provide an accurate map of the stars in the sky. To use them you would match up the metal plates to the sky and you could calculate your location. Astrolabes date back to 220BC but one with Hebrew and Arabic markings was found and it is thought to have originated back in the 11th Century.

Exploring the Moon has become increasingly more of a focal point lately, especially with a series of landers recently launched with various degrees of success. One of the difficulties those landers and any future human missions face is understanding the terrain they are landing on and potentially traversing in the case of a rover or human. To help fight this problem, a team of researchers from Switzerland has developed a drone concept that could help map out some of the more interesting, potentially hazardous areas to explore on the Moon.

It’s always a real benefit to have scientists on the ground, able to use the wealth of their experience and ingenuity to ‘think on their feet’.  It is therefore always quite challenging to use space probes that to a degree need to be autonomous. This is certainly true of the NASA Perseverance Rover that has been drilling core samples that will one day (hopefully) be returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return mission. Until then, a team of Geologists have developed a technique to calculate the orientation of the core samples to help with future analysis. 

Hubble and JWST are busily scanning the sky, sending home enormous amounts of data. They shift from target to target, completing the required observations.

Of all the stars in the sky, betelgeuse must be among the most enigmatic. One of its many mysteries surrounds the speed of its rotation which is surprisingly fast for a supergiant star. If it were placed where the Sun was, then its photosphere (visible layer) would be out around the orbit of Jupiter and it would be moving at 5 km/s. A new study now hints that instead of high rotation, it may be that the surface is boiling so furiously that it has been mistakingly identified as fast rotation. 

Space travel seems to be a fairly regular occurrence now with crews hopping up and down to the International Space Station. This week, another crew arrived on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule known as Endeavour.  On board were NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps along with cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The ISS already had seven people on board so this brought the total crew to eleven. The launch almost got cancelled due to a crack in the hatch seal. 

Supermassive black holes have been found at the heart of most galaxies but understanding how they have formed has eluded astronomers for some time. One of the most popular theories suggests they merge over and over again to form larger black holes. A recent discovery may support this however the pair of supermassive black holes are orbiting 24 light years apart and measure an incredible 28 billion solar masses making it the heaviest ever seen. 

Packing to go to space is a lot like getting ready for a plane ride with only a carry-on bag. You have to maximize the use of the space in your bag at the same time you want to make sure you have what you need. That’s the challenge astronauts face in the upcoming Artemis moon missions. So, NASA held a competition to figure out the best and most innovative ways to store cargo for the missions.

Nearly 5 billion years ago a region of gas gravitationally collapsed within a vast molecular cloud. At the center of the region, the Sun began to form, while around it formed a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust out of which Earth and the other planets of the solar system would form. We know this is how the solar system began because we have observed this process in systems throughout the galaxy. But there are details of the process we still don’t understand, such as why gas planets are relatively rare in our system.