Space News & Blog Articles

The event horizon is a fascinating part of a black hole’s anatomy. In 2017, telescopes around the world gathered data on the event horizon surrounding the supermassive black hole at the heart of M87. This was the first time we had ever seen an image of such a phenomenon. Since then, 120,000 more images of the region have been captured and, as astronomers sift through the data, their model of M87’s event horizon has evolved. 

A classic scene from several high sci-fi movies and shows is when the characters approach their new spaceship in space for the first time. It is typically attached to a massive structure – think of the Kuat Drive Yards in Star Wars or the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards around Mars in Star Trek. These gigantic structures play a role akin to what dry docks do for modern navies – they allow for the construction of ships in a relatively controlled environment with access to tools and equipment specialized for their construction. That is the idea behind a new NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant to ThinkOrbital, a company specializing in In-space assembly, manufacturing, and construction (ISAM&C). Their idea is to build a “Construction Assembly Destination” in orbit to build spacecraft in space.

Exoplanets have captured the imagination of public and scientists alike and, as the search continues for more, researchers have turned their attention to the evolution of metallicity in the Milky Way. With this answer comes more of an idea about where planets are likely to form in our Galaxy. They have found that stars with high-mass planets have higher metallicity than those with lower amounts of metals. They also found that stars with planets tend to be younger than stars without planets. This suggests planetary formation follows the evolution of a galaxy with a ring of planet formation moving outward over time. 

Astronomers have found two planets around two separate stars that are succumbing to their stars’ intense heat. Both are disintegrating before our telescopic eyes, leaving trails of debris similar to a comet’s. Both are ultra-short-period planets (USPs) that orbit their stars rapidly.

Exoplanet exploration has taken off in recent years, with over 5500 being discovered so far. Some have even been in the habitable zones of their stars. Imaging one such potentially habitable exoplanet is the dream of many exoplanet hunters, however, technology has limited their ability to do that. In particular, one specific piece of technology needs to be improved before we can directly image an exoplanet in the habitable zone of another star – a starshade. Christine Gregg, a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, hopes to contribute to the effort of developing one and has received a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant as part of the 2025 cohort to work on a star shade that is based on a special type of metamaterial.

Star formation in the early Universe was a vigorous process that created gigantic stars. Called Population 3 stars, these giants were massive, extremely luminous stars, that lived short lives, many of which were ended when they exploded as primordial supernovae.

The structure of the cosmos is rooted in symmetry. As first demonstrated by Emmy Noether in 1918, for every physical law of conservation in the Universe, there is a corresponding physical symmetry. For example, all other things being equal, a baseball hit by a bat today will behave exactly the same as it did yesterday. This symmetry of time means that energy is conserved. Empty space is the same everywhere and in all directions. This symmetry of space means that there is conservation of linear and rotational momentum. On and on. This deep connection is now known as Noether’s Theorem, and it is central to all of modern physics.

One of my gripes with ‘The Martian’ movie was the depiction of the winds on Mars. The lower air density means that the sort of high speed winds we might experience on Earth carry far less of an impact on Mars. During its 72 flights in the Martian air, NASA’s ingenuity helicopter took meticulous records of the conditions. A new paper has been released and reports upon the wind speeds on the red planet at various altitudes. Previous models suggested wind speeds would not exceed 15 m/s but Ingeniuty saw speeds as high as 25 m/s.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the greater mysteries facing astronomers today, rivaled only by Gravitational Waves (GWs) and Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs). Originally discovered in 2007 by American astronomer Duncan Lorimer (for whom the “Lorimer Burst“ is named), these shot, intense blasts of radio energy produce more power in a millisecond than the Sun generates in a month. In most cases, FRBs are one-off events that brightly flash and are never heard from again. But in some cases, astronomers have detected FRBs that were repeating in nature, raising more questions about what causes them.

When searching for alien life, it’s not unusual to use Earth as a test bed for theories and even practice runs. Perhaps one of the most tantalising places in the Solar System to look for life is Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It has a liquid water interior and it is here that life may just be possible. A team of researchers want to test techniques for searching for life on Enceledaus by exploring the oceans of Earth. They have collected  water and ice samples and hope to find chemicals like methane and hydrogen. 

There might be a type of exoplanet without dry land. They’re called “Hycean” worlds, a portmanteau of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘ocean.’ They’re mostly or entirely covered in oceans and have thick hydrogen atmospheres.

Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets – almost half of the total – in its almost ten years of operation. However, most data analysis focused only on one of the 150,000 targets it “intended” to look at. While it was making those observations, there were a myriad of background stars that also had their light captured incidentally. John Bienias and Robert Szabó of Hungary’s Konkoly Observatory have spent a lot of time looking at those background stars and recently published a paper suggesting there might be seven more exoplanet candidates hiding in the data.

Rovers on alien worlds need to be built of strong stuff. The dry rugged terrain can be punishing on the wheels as they explore the surface. In order to prevent the damage to the wheels, NASA is testing a shape memory alloy material that can return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, heated or cooled.  NASA has already used this material for years but never in tires, in what may be its perfect application.