Space News & Blog Articles

Surrounding the brilliant Sun is a layer of diffuse plasma known as the corona. You can’t see it most of the time, but if you happen to experience a total eclipse, the corona is the glow that surrounds the shadow of the Moon. The corona is pale white, almost pink because it has a temperature of more than a million Kelvin. This is vastly hotter than the surface of the Sun, which is about 6,500 K. So how does the corona get so hot?

A recent study published in Nature Geoscience uses supercomputer climate models to examine how a supercontinent, dubbed Pangea Ultima (also called Pangea Proxima), that will form 250 million years from now will result in extreme temperatures, making this new supercontinent uninhabitable for life, specifically mammals. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers led by the University of Bristol and holds the potential to help scientists better understand how Earth’s climate could change in the distant future from natural processes, as opposed to climate change.

Mercury is considered a scorching, barren landscape that would literally melt your face off if you were standing on it in full sunlight. But scientists have also known for a long time that it was shrinking…because it was cold. New research based on distinct features in Mercury’s geography suggests that it might continue to do so even today.

On October 13th, at 10:19 AM Eastern (07:19 AM Pacific), NASA’s Psyche mission successfully launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This spacecraft is now on its way to rendezvous with the M-type asteroid of the same name, an object in the Main Asteroid Belt almost entirely composed of metal. This metallic asteroid is thought to be the remnant of a planetoid that lost its outer layers, leaving behind a core of iron-nickel and precious metals. By studying this object, scientists hope to learn more about the formation of rocky planets.

China is building a new neutrino detector named TRIDENT, the Tropical Deep-sea Neutrino Telescope. They’re building it in the South China Sea, near the equator. This next-generation neutrino telescope will feature improved sensitivity and should help clear up the mystery around cosmic rays and their origins.

The ESA’s Gaia mission is releasing a new tranche of astronomical data. The mission has released three regular, massive hauls of data since it launched in 2013, named Gaia DR1, DR2, and DR3. The ESA is calling this one a ‘focused product release,’ and while it’s smaller than the previous three releases, it’s still impactful.

Modern astronomy holds that all major galaxies (with the Milky Way as no exception) are the accumulation of numerous small mergers. Thus, it should be expected that some of the globular clusters that are now part of our galaxy are likely inherited from other galaxies which have been cannibalized by the Milky Way, or even stolen from intact companion galaxies such as the Magellanic Clouds.

Ah, dark matter particles, what could you be? The answer still eludes us, and astronomers keep trying new ideas to find them. Such as a new paper in Physical Review Letters that suggests if dark matter is made of axions we might see their remnant glow near pulsars.

Many of us have dreamed about flying over the surface of Mars—someday. The planet offers so many cool places to study, and doing it in person is something for future Marsnauts to consider. The Mars Express spacecraft has been mapping the Red Planet for years. It now gives us an up-close look now, through an animation of thousands of images of Mars from its cameras.

Nature is stingy with its secrets. That’s why humans developed the scientific method. Without it, we’d still be ignorant and living in a world dominated by superstitions.

The universe is swimming in black holes, from stellar mass to supermassive behemoths. But, there’s one class that remains elusive: the “middle child” class. These are called “intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH).” How numerous are they, how do they form, and where are they? To answer those questions, astronomers simulated possible formation scenarios.

Astronomers examining a star cluster near Sgr A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, found that the cluster has some unusually young members for its location. That’s difficult to explain since the region so close to the powerful black hole is infused with powerful radiation and dominated by the black hole’s extremely powerful gravitational force. According to our understanding of stellar formation, young stars shouldn’t be there.

Throughout the 20th century, multiple proposals have been made for the crewed exploration of Mars. These include the famed “Mars Project” by Werner von Braun, the “Mars Direct” mission architecture by Robert Zubrin and David Baker, NASA’s Mars Design Reference Mission studies, and SpaceX’s Mars & Beyond plan. By 2033, two space agencies (NASA and the CNSA) plan to commence sending crews and payloads to the Red Planet. These and other space agencies envision building bases there that could eventually lead to permanent settlements and the first “Martians.”

The TRAPPIST-1 system continues to fascinate astronomers, astrobiologists, and exoplanet hunters alike. In 2017, NASA announced that this red dwarf star (located 39 light-years away) was orbited by no less than seven rocky planets – three of which were within the star’s habitable zone (HZ). Since then, scientists have attempted to learn more about this system of planets to determine whether they could support life. Of particular concern is the way TRAPPIST-1 – like all M-type (red dwarf) stars – is prone to flare-ups, which could have a detrimental effect on planetary atmospheres.

There’s a common pattern in science. We develop some new process or tool that allows us to gather all kinds of data we’ve never had before, the data threatens to overturn all we’ve assumed about some long-established theory, and then the dust settles. Unfortunately, the early stage of this process generates a lot of sensationalism in the press. Early results from the JWST are a good example of this.

Carbon and water are so common on Earth that they’re barely worth mentioning. But not if you’re a scientist. They know that carbon and water are life-enabling chemicals and are also links to the larger cosmos.

What would happen if two giant planets collided? It would be terrifying to behold if it happened in our Solar System. Imagine if Neptune and Uranus slammed into each other. Picture the chaos as a new super-heated object took their places, and clouds of debris blocked out the Sun. Think of the monumental destruction as objects are sent careening into each other.

Even with the clearest image from the best telescope in the world, astronomers still won’t know what they’re looking at. It takes a fundamental understanding of physics, particularly how light works, to glean scientific data from the images that telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) capture. To help with that understanding, a whole group of physics modelers specialize in trying to understand what different scenarios would look like with different telescope technologies. A new paper fits neatly into this mold, where researchers from UC Riverside, NASA Goddard, American University, and the University of Maryland decided to model what they think volcanic activity would look like on an exoplanet around a Sun-like star.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) recently disclosed a prototype radio telescope antennae for its next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) to a group of press, scientists, engineers, and government and business leaders from the United States and Germany at the end of a workshop held at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. While construction on the ngVLA isn’t slated to begin until 2026, this recent unveiling provided an opportunity for mtex antenna technology to present its 18-meter dish, which consists of 76 individual aluminum panels arranged in an 8-sided shape.

The James Webb Space Telescope is widely considered to be better than the Hubble Space Telescope. But the JWST doesn’t replace its elder sibling; it’s the Hubble’s successor. The Hubble is nowhere near ready to retire. It’s still a powerful science instrument with lots to contribute. Comparing images of the same object, NGC 5068, from both telescopes illustrates each one’s value and how they can work together.

The International Space Station (ISS) will be retired in 2030 after more than thirty-two years of continuous service. Naturally, there are questions regarding what will replace this station, which has served as a bastion for vital research and inter-agency cooperation in space. In the past, China has indicated that their Tiangong (“heavenly palace”) space station will be a successor and rival to the ISS, offering astronauts from other nations an alternative platform to conduct research in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). As part of this plan, China recently announced plans to double the size of Tiangong in the coming years.