Space News & Blog Articles

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.

Ever wonder what our Milky Way Galaxy looked like in its early history? Astronomers using the Webb Telescope (JWST) found another galaxy that’s almost a mirror image of our galaxy as an infant. It’s nicknamed “The Sparkler”. That’s because it has about two dozen glittering globular clusters orbiting around it. There are also a few dwarf galaxies there, being swallowed up by the galaxy.

Another day, another static fire test, another milestone on the road to space! For months, crews at the SpaceX Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, have been conducting static fire tests of the B7 Super Heavy booster prototype. In previous tests, the ground crews test-fired 7 to 14 of the B7s Raptor 2 engines for periods lasting 7 to 13 seconds. Today, the crews prepped the BN7 Booster for the first static fire test, where all thirty-three engines would fire simultaneously. While two of its Raptors did not fire, the test was a success and set a new record for the amount of thrust produced in a single booster fire.

Life doesn’t appear from nothing. Its origins are wrapped up in the same long, arduous process that creates the elements, then stars, then planets. Then, if everything lines up just right, after billions of years, a simple, single-celled organism can appear, maybe in a puddle of water on a hospitable planet somewhere.

In a recent study submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) examine the potential for water-worlds around M-dwarf stars. Water-worlds, also known as ocean worlds, are planets that possess bodies of liquid water either directly on its surface, such as Earth, or somewhere beneath it, such as Jupiter’s moon, Europa and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

According to the most widely-accepted cosmological theories, the Universe began roughly 13.8 billion years ago in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. Ever since then, the Universe has been in a constant state of expansion, what astrophysicists know as the Hubble Constant. For decades, astronomers have attempted to measure the rate of expansion, which has traditionally been done in two ways. One consists of measuring expansion locally using variable stars and supernovae, while the other involves cosmological models and redshift measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

Quaoar is one of about 3,000 dwarf planets in our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. Astronomers discovered it in 2002. It’s only half as large as Pluto, about 1,121 km (697 mi) in diameter. Quaoar has a tiny moon named Weywot, and the planet and its moon are very difficult to observe in detail.

A Russian KOSMOS 2499 satellite broke up last month — for a second time — according to the Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron. In a recent tweet, the Space Force said they are currently tracking 85 individual pieces of debris at an altitude of 1,169 km (726 miles). The breakup occurred on January 4, 2023, but the reason for the disintegration remains unknown.

The moon hunter strikes again.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), located in China, is currently the world’s largest and most sophisticated radio observatory. While its primary purpose is to conduct large-scale neutral hydrogen surveys (the most common element in the Universe), study pulsars, and detect Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), scientists have planned to use the array in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Integral to this field of study is the search for technosignatures, signs of technological activity that indicate the presence of an advanced civilization.

In 1992, humanity’s effort to understand the Universe took a significant step forward. That’s when astronomers discovered the first exoplanets. They’re named Poltergeist (Noisy Ghost) and Phobetor (Frightener), and they orbit a pulsar about 2300 light-years away.

There’s a lot of matter in the Universe, but not all of it is visible to us. Matter is, essentially, anything that has mass and takes up space. That includes us, the planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies. It also includes dark matter. It’s all spread out through space.

Oops! They’ve done it again. Sierra Space blew up their space habitat for the third time – intentionally — all in the name of testing.

Now’s the time to catch periodic Comet 96P Machholz on its encore dawn performance, before it slides out of view.

Astronomers have found another Earth-sized planet. It’s about 31 light-years away and orbits in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. It’s probably tidally locked, which can be a problem around red dwarf stars. But the team that found it is optimistic about its potential habitability.

The Tarantula Nebula, also called 30 Doradus, is the brightest star-forming region in our part of the galaxy. It’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and contains the most massive and hottest stars we know of. The Tarantula Nebula has been a repeat target for the Hubble since the telescope’s early years.

Galaxies fill a lot of roles in the universe. The most obvious one is star formation factories. Without that activity, the cosmos would be a very different place. The European Southern Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array recently zeroed in on the galaxy NGC 4303. Their goal: to take a multi-wavelength view of its star formation activity.

While astronomers and engineers were trying to calibrate one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s instruments last summer, they serendipitously found a previously unknown small 100–200-meter (300-600 ft) asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Originally, the astronomers deemed the calibrations as a failed attempt because of technical glitches. But they noticed the asteroid while going through their data from the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), and ended up finding what is likely the smallest object observed to date by JWST. It is also one of the smallest objects ever detected in our Solar System’s main belt of asteroids.

Webb is fully operational again, Rolls-Royce is building a nuclear reactor for the Moon, and the space debris worst-case scenario almost happened.

Over over 50% of high mass stars reside in multiple star systems. But due to their complex orbital interactions, physicists have a difficult time understanding just how stable and long-lived these systems are. Recently a team of astronomers applied machine learning techniques to simulations of multiple star systems and found a new way that stars in such systems can arrange themselves.

A team of astronomers have used a model of earthquakes to understand glitches in the timing of pulsars. Their results suggest that pulsars may have interiors that are far stranger than can be imagined.