Space News & Blog Articles

Objects in the Solar System can stand out for different reasons. Some of them are bright, some of them get too close to Earth for comfort, and others have incredible surface features or unusual compositions. But some objects stand out for their orbits. Those include Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO).

Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), a six-telescope interferometer, excels at studying stars. It's been observing them for 20 years and has contributed to 276 published papers. The University is celebrating its achievements so far, and underscoring how Georgia State evolved from an institution not known for research to one that's now considered a large research university.

If life is to be found elsewhere in our Solar System, astrobiologists believe it is likely to be simple (microbial) in nature. While most of our astrobiology efforts are currently focused on Mars, multiple missions will be sent to the outer Solar System in the coming years to search for possible signs of life inside Jupiter's icy moon Europa. For decades, scientists have theorized that life could exist beneath the moon's surface around hydrothermal vents located at the core-mantle boundary. Searching for possible evidence of this life is the purpose of the ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) and NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which are currently en route to the Jupiter system.

Beyond plans to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era, NASA and other space agencies have their sights trained on Mars, Venus, and other deep-space destinations. To accomplish this, robust power systems are needed to provide ample power for spacecraft instruments and propulsion systems, thus reducing overall transit times. To this end, NASA is considering Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), which have been used by the agency for over 60 years, most recently with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and the upcoming Dragonfly mission destined for Titan.

Black holes played a critical role in the formation of the early universe. However, astronomers have been debating for a long time just how critical, as the information we had about early black holes, which exist at high red-shifts, was relatively limited. A new paper from a group of researchers led by Sophia Geris at the University of Cambridge combined several spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to add some context to the formation of black holes early in the universe, and found that there are plenty of smaller ones lurking around, and lending credence to the idea that black holes of all sizes contributed to the formation of our modern universe.

Astronomers have found a fascinating new world that challenges our understanding of planetary systems. Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of researchers has discovered TOI-2431 b, an Earth sized planet orbiting a nearby star just 117 light years away. What makes this discovery extraordinary isn't just the planet's size, it’s how incredibly fast it races around its star.

The interstellar medium (ISM) is the gas and dust that's spread throughout the space between stars. It's mostly hydrogen, and its density ranges from extremely diffuse regions with few atoms, to massive, dense clouds of cold molecular hydrogen that spawn stars. In between those two extremes are different types of clouds, and those clouds are anything but uniform.