Universe Today

Staying afloat in space can be deceptively hard.  Just ask the characters from Gravity, or any number of the hundreds of small satellites that fall into the atmosphere in a given year.  Any object placed in low Earth orbit (LEO) must constantly fight against the drag caused by the small number of air molecules that …

Continue reading "A New Satellite Is Going to Try to Maintain low Earth Orbit Without Any Propellant"

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Have you ever seen the videos of people taking daily selfies of themselves over the course of years or even decades?  Now the sun has started it’s own series of pictures – with 366 complete pictures from the year 2020, captured by the European Space Agency’s Proba-2 satellite. There are a couple of interesting things …

Continue reading "This is What the Sun Looked Like for Every Day in 2020"

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In a new study, a pair of Harvard astrophysicists did the math on whether or not BLC1 is an extraterrestrial signal - and the results are not good!

The post According to the Math, it’s Highly Unlikely That an Intelligent Civilization is Located at Alpha Centauri appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA accomplished a major milestone today when it conducted a Hot Fire Test of the SLS Core Stage, firing all four of its engines at once.

The post Space Launch System Performs a Dramatic Hot Fire Test, Blasting With all 4 Engines at Once appeared first on Universe Today.

The UK Space Agency recently contracted with the British Rolls Royce company to research nuclear propulsion, which could allow for all kinds of deep-space missions!

The post The UK is Considering Nuclear Propulsion in Space appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s almost time. Soon the James Webb Space Telescope will be on its way to the Sun/Earth L2 Lagrange point and will begin its at least 5-year science mission. Really, it’s going to happen. Despite several delays since the program began in 1996 and a budget that has exceeded the original by several billion dollars, …

Continue reading "James Webb Unfolds Sunshield"

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Many consider the various rovers we’ve sent to Mars as the next best thing to sending a geologist to the Red Planet. Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity have carried all the necessary equipment similar to what human geologists use on Earth, and are able to navigate the terrain, “see” the landscape with the various cameras, pick …

Continue reading "Thanks to Perseverance, We’re Finally Going to Hear What Mars Sounds Like"

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It’s always a sad day when a mission comes to an end. And it’s even sadder when the mission never really got going in the first place. That’s where we’re at with NASA’s InSight lander. The entire mission isn’t over, but the so-called Mole, the instrument designed and built by Germany’s DLR, has been pronounced …

Continue reading "NASA Has Given Up on Trying to Deploy InSight’s Mole"

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A image released by the MRO mission shows a landslide near the location where the Perseverance rover will land, illustrating how Mars is still a active world.

The post Mars is Still an Active World. Here’s a Landslide in Nili Fossae appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers have found evidence of faint gravitational waves using an array of pulsars in our galaxy.

The post Astronomers see a Hint of the Gravitational Wave Background to the Universe appeared first on Universe Today.