Space News & Blog Articles

Our solar system is home to a wide diversity of planetary bodies, boasting eight planets, five officially recognized dwarf planets, and almost 1,000 confirmed moons. The eight planets consist of the four rocky (terrestrial) planets of the inner solar system and the four gas giant planets of the outer solar system. The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter, measuring a radius and mass of 11 and 318 times of Earth, respectively. However, the discovery of exoplanets quickly altered our understanding of planetary sizes, as several have been discovered to have masses and radii several times that of Jupiter. So, how big can planet get, and are there limits to their sizes?

In the coming weeks or months, the Artemis II rocket will make its launch window and take off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will then carry Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen on a ten-day trip around the Moon. The flight will not only validate the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft for crewed missions. It will also raise the curtain on humanity's long-awaited return to the Moon; this time, with the intention of staying.

When stars like our Sun reach the end of their main sequence, they enter their Red Giant Branch phase and expand to become several times their original size. During this time, the star will undergo chemical changes in its interior, altering the composition of its surface layer. For decades, researchers have wondered how the changing chemical composition in the interior drives changes in the upper layers. Central to this question is the stable layer that connects the core to the outer layer and serves as a barrier between the two.

Space science is interesting in its diversity. At times, it's an extremely complex, expensive and time-consuming effort to gather data. Look how challenging it was for Curiosity and Perseverance to reach the surface of Mars safely. Look at the JWST's long journey from clean room to Sun-Earth L2, and its eventual science results.

Searching for life beyond Earth has rapidly advanced in recent years. However, directly imaging an exoplanet and all their incredible features remain elusive given the literal astronomical distances from Earth. Therefore, astronomers have settled by exploring exoplanet atmospheres for signatures of life, also called biosignatures. This is currently conducted by analyzing the starlight that passes through an exoplanet’s atmosphere, known as spectroscopy, as it passes in front of its star, also called a transit. But improvements continue to be made to better explore exoplanet atmospheres, specifically cleaning up messy data.

More than sixty years ago, Dr. Frank Drake and his colleagues conducted the very first experiment dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Since then, astronomers have continued to scan space for signs of alien transmissions, predominantly in the radio spectrum. In more recent years, the search has expanded to include thermal signatures and optical flashes, and additional forms of technological activity ("technosignatures") are already being incorporated. So far, all these experiments have produced null results, prompting SETI researchers to consider what they might be missing.