Space News & Blog Articles

A professor from Northumbria University in the North East region of England has been granted telescope time with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) later this year to study Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, also known as its ionosphere. Being granted such access to JWST is extremely competitive which makes getting access to use its powerful instruments to study the cosmos a very high honor.

Almost anywhere you go on the internet, it seems nearly impossible to escape articles on AI. Even here at UT, we’ve published several. Typically they focus on how a specific research group leveraged the technology to make sense of reams of data. But that sort of pattern recognition isn’t all that AI is good for. In fact, it’s becoming pretty capable of abstract thought. And one place where abstract thought can be helpful is in developing new scientific theories. With that thought in mind, a team of researchers from ESA, Columbia, and the Australian National University (ANU) utilized an AI to come up with scientific hypotheses in astronomy.

The search for life is an incredibly evocative driver of cosmic exploration. It captures our imagination to think that there might be living things out there somewhere else. That’s one reason why we point our eyes—and telescopes—to the stars.

While the European Space Agency isn’t planning to build their own spacesuits anytime soon, they want to be ready. ESA recently had the Space Suit Design Competition, allowing the public to propose designs for future European extra-vehicular activity (EVA) suits.

If we want to understand the Universe, we have to start with its size. Ancient people had no idea there was a Universe the way we understand it now, and no idea of its size. They thought there was the Earth, with everything else rotating around it. It was the only conclusion within reach for a long time.

Reusable launch vehicles have been a boon for the commercial space industry. By recovering and refurbishing the first stages of rockets, launch providers have dramatically reduced the cost of sending payloads and even crew to space. Beyond first-stage boosters, there are efforts to make rockets entirely reusable, from second stages to payload fairings. There are currently multiple strategies for booster recovery, including mid-air retrieval using helicopters and nets. Still, the favored method involves boosters returning to a landing pad under their own power (the boost-back and landing maneuver).