|
01/27/2023 10:39 PM
|
|
It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes
|
|
Detecting exoplanets was frontier science not long ago. But now we’ve found over 5,000 of them, and we expect to find them around almost every star. The next step is to characterize these planets more fully in hopes of finding ones that might support life. Directly imaging them will be part of that effort. But …
Continue reading "It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes"
The post It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/27/2023 07:58 PM
|
|
NASA and DARPA Will be Testing a Nuclear Rocket in Space
|
|
NASA and DARPA have teamed up to create a nuclear thermal rocket that could perform an orbital flight test by 2027.
The post NASA and DARPA Will be Testing a Nuclear Rocket in Space appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/27/2023 07:16 PM
|
|
Europe Will be Building the Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return Mission
|
|
Now that the Perseverance rover has dropped off ten regolith and rock sample tubes for a future sample return mission to retrieve, the plans for such a mission are coming together. The mission is a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, and ESA has agreed to build a 2.5-meter-long robotic arm to …
Continue reading "Europe Will be Building the Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return Mission"
The post Europe Will be Building the Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return Mission appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/27/2023 02:44 PM
|
|
Truck-Sized Asteroid Flew Past Earth Yesterday, Coming Within 3,600 km
|
|
On January 26, a truck-sized asteroid flew past Earth, coming extremely close – within 3,600 km (2,200 miles) above the planet’s surface. This is well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites and NASA says this flyby is one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded. The asteroid, named 2023 BU’s has an …
Continue reading "Truck-Sized Asteroid Flew Past Earth Yesterday, Coming Within 3,600 km"
The post Truck-Sized Asteroid Flew Past Earth Yesterday, Coming Within 3,600 km appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/26/2023 10:39 PM
|
|
Webb NIRISS Instrument has Gone Offline
|
|
The JWST is having a problem. One of its instruments, the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS,) has gone offline. The NIRISS performs spectroscopy on exoplanet atmospheres, among other things. It’s been offline since Sunday. January 15th due to a communications error. The internal communications error led to the software timing out. There’s no …
Continue reading "Webb NIRISS Instrument has Gone Offline"
The post Webb NIRISS Instrument has Gone Offline appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/26/2023 09:50 PM
|
|
Lucy Adds Another Asteroid to its Flyby List
|
|
In October 2021, NASA launched its ambitious Lucy mission. Its targets are asteroids, two in the main belt and eight Jupiter trojans, which orbit the Sun in the same path as Jupiter. The mission is named after early hominin fossils (Australopithecus afarensis,) and the name pays homage to the idea that asteroids are fossils from …
Continue reading "Lucy Adds Another Asteroid to its Flyby List"
The post Lucy Adds Another Asteroid to its Flyby List appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/26/2023 06:41 PM
|
|
Astronomers Pin Down the Age of the Most Distant Galaxy: Seen 367 Million Years After the Big Bang
|
|
Staring off into the ancient past with a $10 billion space telescope, hoping to find extraordinarily faint signals from the earliest galaxies, might seem like a forlorn task. But it’s only forlorn if we don’t find any. Now that the James Webb Space Telescope has found those signals, the exercise has moved from forlorn to …
Continue reading "Astronomers Pin Down the Age of the Most Distant Galaxy: Seen 367 Million Years After the Big Bang"
The post Astronomers Pin Down the Age of the Most Distant Galaxy: Seen 367 Million Years After the Big Bang appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/26/2023 05:55 PM
|
|
Perseverance Takes a Selfie to Show off Some of its Samples
|
|
One of the main jobs for the Perseverance Mars rover past few weeks has been collecting carefully selected samples of Mars rock and soil. These samples have been placed and sealed in special sample tubes and left in well-identified places so that a future sample return mission can collect them and bring the Martian samples …
Continue reading "Perseverance Takes a Selfie to Show off Some of its Samples"
The post Perseverance Takes a Selfie to Show off Some of its Samples appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/26/2023 03:57 PM
|
|
There's a Crater on Mars That Looks Like a Bear
|
|
Facial pareidolia is the human tendency or illusion of seeing facial structures in an everyday objects – such as seeing the “man in the Moon,” or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast. But here’s a newly found crater on Mars that might be a case of ‘bear-adoilia.’ There’s no denying, the crater …
Continue reading "There's a Crater on Mars That Looks Like a Bear"
The post There's a Crater on Mars That Looks Like a Bear appeared first on Universe Today.
|
|
01/25/2023 08:52 PM
|
|
According to Simulations, the Milky Way is One in a Million
|
|
Humanity is in a back-and-forth relationship with nature. First, we thought we were at the center of everything, with the Sun and the entire cosmos rotating around our little planet. We eventually realized that wasn’t true. Over the centuries, we’ve found that though Earth and life might be rare, our Sun is pretty normal, our …
Continue reading "According to Simulations, the Milky Way is One in a Million"
The post According to Simulations, the Milky Way is One in a Million appeared first on Universe Today.
|
