Week in images: 30 January - 03 February 2023
Space News & Blog Articles
Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.
Rare green comet's close approach a feast for astrophotographers (photos)
A rare green comet that hasn't been seen since the time of the Neaderthals made its closest approach to Earth on Feb. 1, and astrophotographers all over the world couldn't peel their eyes off it.
Spaceport Cornwall: The ultimate guide to the UK's first spaceport
Spaceport Cornwall is the UK's first licensed spaceport. Here we explore the air-launch hub in more detail.
Zero-gravity parabolic flights get surge of demand for spaceflight work
Commercial astronauts, disability advocates and private space experiment makers are adding more parabolic airplane flights to Zero-G's manifest.
Tricky alien worlds easier to find when humans and machines team up
A combination of citizen science and machine learning is a promising new technique for astronomers looking for exoplanets.
Curiosity rover finds metallic meteorite on Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover has rolled up on another meteorite on Mars, an iron-nickel rock the mission team has dubbed "Cacao."
This Week's Sky at a Glance, February 3 – 12
Comet ZTF is still near its brightest, moonlight and all. Around the Big and Little Dog Stars, trace out the stick-figure patterns of the big and little dogs. A ghostly unicorn haunts the inside of the Winter Triangle.
Earth from Space: Kolkata, India
Image: Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is featured in this image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Exploring a turbulent tarantula
Image: Exploring a turbulent tarantula
This Binary System is Destined to Become a Kilonova
Kilonovae are extraordinarily rare. Astronomers think there are only about 10 of them in the Milky Way. But they’re extraordinarily powerful and produce heavy elements like uranium, thorium, and gold.
How Can We Know if We’re Looking at Habitable exo-Earths or Hellish exo-Venuses?
The differences between Earth and Venus are obvious to us. One is radiant with life and adorned with glittering seas, and the other is a scorching, glowering hellhole, its volcanic surface shrouded by thick clouds and visible only with radar. But the difference wasn’t always clear. In fact, we used to call Venus Earth’s sister planet.
Chaotic 'knot' of merging galaxy clusters captured in multiple wavelengths
Combining X-ray, radio, optical and infrared wavelengths, astronomers have imaged the messy collision of three galactic clusters leading to the formation of Abell 2256.
With a 'wiggle and nudge,' spacewalking astronauts install stubborn array mount outside space station
Two spacewalking astronauts wiggled a stubborn strut into place, completing the installation of a solar array platform outside the International Space Station.
Watch a drone drop a microgravity capsule in 1st-of-its-kind experiment (video)
A British startup has performed a first-of-its-kind microgravity experiment using a drone.
Space station astronauts finish preps for next pair of new solar arrays
Astronaut Koichi Wakata, in foreground at right, works on the space station’s truss during a spacewalk Thursday. Astronaut Nicole Mann is visible in the background at left. Credit: NASA TV / Spaceflight Now
Continuing work left over from a spacewalk last month, astronauts Nicole Mann and Koichi Wakata headed outside the International Space Station Thursday to finish installing a mounting bracket for new solar arrays due to arrive at the complex on a SpaceX resupply mission in June.
With moon crews to assign, Joe Acaba named NASA's new chief astronaut
As NASA nears selecting its first crew to fly to the moon in more than 50 years, the agency has a new leader for its astronaut corps, Joe Acaba, who has flown into space on three missions.
Artemis 1 moon rocket looks ready for astronaut missions, NASA says
NASA's Space Launch System megarocket aced its first-ever liftoff late last year and appears ready to take the next big step — launching astronauts.
The Historic Discussion of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog
From the time of its writing in the 2nd century CE, Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest stood at the forefront of mathematical astronomy for nearly 1,500 years. This work included a catalog of 1,025 stars, listing their coordinates (in ecliptic longitude and latitude) and brightnesses. While astronomers within a few centuries realized that the models for the sun, moon, and planets all had issues (which we today recognize as being a result of them being incorrect, geocentric models relying on circles and epicycles instead of a heliocentric model with elliptical orbits), the catalog of stars was generally believed to be correct.
Lucy Mission Has a New Asteroid to Fly By
NASA’s Lucy mission now has a new first target of opportunity, a main-belt asteroid it will visit this November.
New satellite to police carbon dioxide emitters from space
The first-ever satellite designed to detect major emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is set to launch to space this year.
