Space News & Blog Articles

Astronomers sometimes find conflicting data when trying to answer a question. This is a normal part of the scientific process, and it simply means that more data is needed to prove or disprove the theory they are trying to test. One prominent example of conflicting data in recent exoplanet research was that of planet GJ 1132 b, which either had or didn’t have an atmosphere, depending on which data set was being used. A new paper from researchers using more observational time on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can now definitively say that, most likely, GJ 1132 b doesn’t have an atmosphere - and that finding has wider implications for exoplanet research more generally.

The early Universe continues to spring surprises on astronomers. In a recent study of dim, distant objects, astronomers at the University of Missouri found at least 300 of them that look way too bright. That means they're forming stars much earlier than expected, or something else is going on. Whatever it is could affect our understanding of events in the infant cosmos. The astronomers used two of JWST’s powerful infrared cameras: the Near-Infrared Camera and the Mid-Infrared Instrument. Both are specifically designed to detect light from the most distant places in space, which is key when studying the early Universe.

High-mass stars with eight or more solar masses are mysterious. Despite the fact that they're more easily observed than their lower-mass counterparts, astrophysicists have struggled to explain how they become so massive. The problem is that while they accrete material and become more massive, they're also shedding mass.

Deep beneath the ice at the South Pole sits one of the world's most extraordinary scientific instruments: the IceCube neutrino detector. Since 2009, this massive facility has been hunting for ghostly particles called neutrinos that constantly bombard Earth from the depths of space.

Imagine looking up at the night sky and watching a star almost completely disappear, then reappear months later. That's exactly what happened with a distant star called ASASSN-24fw, leaving astronomers scratching their heads for months.

NASA's Perseverance rover has turned its attention to towering sand formations called megaripples at a site named Kerrlaguna on Mars. These windblown features, standing up to a metre tall, are providing new insights into how wind shapes the red planet today and could even help prepare for future human missions to Mars.

Sometimes in science a negative result is just as important as a positive one. And sometimes data artifacts get the better of even the best space observatories. Both of those ideas seem to hold true for the James Webb Space Telescope’s recent observation of Epsilon Eridani, one of our nearest stars, and one that has decades worth of debate about whether there is a planet orbiting it or not. Unfortunately, while JWST’s NIRCam did find some interesting features, they were too close to a noise source in the telescope's instruments to be definitively labeled a “planet”. Their results were recently published on arXiv, and while it may sound disappointing, this type of work is exactly how science progresses.

SpaceX executed the most successful flight test of its super-powerful Starship launch system to date, featuring Starship’s first-ever payload deployment and a thrilling Indian Ocean splashdown. Today’s 10th test flight followed three earlier missions that fell short of full success.

To date, 5983 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,470 star systems, with more than 15,000 candidates awaiting confirmation. Combined with next-generation telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), this massive census is ushering in a new era of astrobiology studies. By analyzing spectra obtained from exoplanet atmospheres, scientists are now able to characterize them and detect chemical signatures that could be indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). These surveys are also a way of learning more about the evolution of planets and their climates over time.

What can parabolic flights teach scientists and engineers about electrolyzers and how the latter can help advance human missions to the Moon and Mars? This is the goal of a recent grant awarded to the Mars Atmospheric Reactor for Synthesis of Consumables (MARS-C) project, which is sponsored by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). The $500,000 award for this research is part of NASA’s TechLeap Prize program with the goal of testing experimental electrolyzer technology that can be used for future missions.

Check out Part 1 of the series here.

Stars have layers like onions, according to theory. The layers are made of different elements, progressing from light to heavy the deeper the layers are. While the theory is strong, observing the inner layers of a star has been basically impossible.