What type of lander could touch down on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io? This is what a recent paper presented at the AIAA 2025 Regional Student Conference hopes to address as a team of student engineers from Spartan Space Systems at San Jose State University investigated a novel concept for landing a spacecraft in Io, which is the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system. This study has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new mission concepts from all levels of academia and industry.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Kepler Reveals the True Source of the Signal Coming From KOI-1755
Launched in 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope revolutionized astronomy by discovering thousands of exoplanets in over 150,000 star systems. Kepler was specifically designed to detect Earth-sized planets by monitoring stars for periodic dips in brightness, which may result from planets passing in front of their star relative to the observer. Known as the Transit Method (or Transit Photometry), this technique has allowed astronomers to identify the majority of the more than 6,000 exoplanets in the current census. However, the method is not perfect and produces some false positives (initially as high as 5%–10%), which can sometimes be caused by other celestial objects.
Measuring Earth's Wobble Without Looking at the Stars
Most people are familiar with the fact that the Earth spins on its axis once every day. The spin however, isn’t as steady as you might think. Like a spinning top slowing down, Earth’s axis wobbles, scribing out a circle on the night sky that currently points very close to the Pole Star in the northern hemisphere. The wobble occurs because Earth isn't a perfect sphere but bulges slightly at the equator. When the Sun and Moon pull on this bulge with their gravity, they create a force that tries to tilt Earth's axis. However, because Earth is already spinning, this tilting force doesn't simply tip the planet over. Instead, it causes the axis to trace out a slow circular wobble in the sky, much like a spinning top wobbles as it slows down. This wobble takes approximately 26,000 years to complete one full cycle.
The JWST Spies The Raw Materials For Exomoons
Planets and moons are inseparable companions and while astronomers are unravelling the complexity of planet formation, moon formation remains mysterious. Our Solar System is fully formed, so to observe exoplanet and exomoon formation, we have to look to other stars. But while we're getting better at detecting exoplanets, detecting exomoons is much more challenging. Their small sizes relative to the exoplanets they orbit renders them practically invisible.
Could a Primordial Black Hole Explain that Mysterious Neutrino?
The KM3NeT Collaboration, a network of neutrino detectors based in the Mediterranean, announced in February that they had found the highest-energy neutrino detected to date. In a recent study, researchers from MIT proposed that this "ghost particle" could be the product of energetic Hawking Radiation emitted by a Primordial Black Holes (PBH) after it decayed outside our Solar System. If true, these findings could be the first evidence of the theoretical radiation Hawking proposed in 1974 by combining quantum field theory and General Relativity.
Simulating HWO’s Ability to Characterize Earth-Sized Exoplanets
How will NASA’s upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission differentiate Earth-sized exoplanets from other exoplanets, specifically Earth-sized exoplanets within the habitable zone, also called exoEarths? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the potential future capabilities of HWO and what shortcomings need to be addressed for it to conduct groundbreaking science, specifically with discovering exoEarths.
Ground testing anomaly destroys Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha booster intended for next flight
An explosion captured by security camera footage shows the results of an anomaly seen during acceptance testing of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket booster designated for the Flight 7 mission. Image: Harold’s Auto Parts
Firefly Aerospace suffered a setback on its road to resuming launches with its Alpha rocket.
The Rubin Observatory's upcoming images may stack up to space telescope ones. Here's how
The algorithm has already been tested on images from the Subaru telescope and will now be used on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory once science results begin to flood in.
Astronauts on the moon and Mars? World space leaders lay out visions for an ambitious future
At a major space congress in Sydney, leaders from NASA, ESA, ISRO, CNSA, and more shared visions for humanity's return to the moon, journeys to Mars and the tech shaping the future of space.
Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket explodes during preflight test
Firefly Aerospace's seventh Alpha rocket exploded on Monday (Sept. 29) during preflight testing. The vehicle was destroyed, and Firefly is assessing the damage to its test stand.
How would a government shutdown affect NASA?
International Space Station astronauts can breathe easy — other NASA missions not so much.
Love and hate in 'Foundation' Season 3: Emmy-winner Cherry Jones spills the tea on her on-screen relationship (exclusive)
'Foundation' actress Cherry Jones discusses her character's tempestuous relationship with Brother Dusk.
The ultimate night sky IQ test
From twinkling constellations to stellar life cycles, this starry skywatching quiz will test your cosmic knowledge.
'Space: Above and Beyond': 30 years on, Fox's failed military sci-fi series is almost lost to time... and that's a shame
Death to the Chig! We take a look back at this pioneering TV show on its 30th birthday.
Cores of Planets in the Solar System
The cores of planets in our solar system exhibit a fascinating diversity, reflecting their formation, size, and composition. Understanding these internal structures provides crucial insights into planetary evolution and the forces that shape celestial bodies.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launch paints glowing 'jellyfish' across Western US skies (photos, video)
SpaceX's Falcon 9 lit up the evening sky Sept. 28, when the expanding 'jellyfish' plume from the rocket's ascent could be seen for hundreds of miles.
Biosphere 2's latest mission: Learning how life first emerged on Earth – and how to make barren worlds habitable
Despite being just outside Tucson, Arizona, Biosphere 2 looks almost like a colony on another planet.
Secrets of ancient life on Earth may live in Japan's hot springs
Ancient iron-metabolizing microbes may have turned toxic oxygen into an energy source.
Canon EOS R50 V review
Targeted at content creators, the Canon EOS R50 V may not be the obvious choice for budding astrophotographers. But do the features and brand name make it an affordable option for capturing the night sky?
Webb studies moon-forming disc around massive planet
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided the first direct measurements of the chemical and physical properties of a potential moon-forming disc encircling a large exoplanet. The carbon-rich disc surrounding the world called CT Cha B, which is located 625 light years away from Earth, is a possible construction yard for moons, although no moons are detected in the Webb data. The disc offers insight into how the moons of Solar System gas giants like Jupiter might have formed.
The Black Hole That Broke the Rules
Black holes are regions of space where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape their grasp. They come in dramatically different sizes. Stellar mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars that have collapsed under their own gravity, typically weighing between three and a few dozen times the mass of our Sun and compressed into a region just kilometres across. Supermassive black holes, by contrast, are the giants lurking at the centres of galaxies, weighing millions to billions of solar masses. These beasts didn't form from a single collapsing star but grew over billions of years through gas accretion and mergers with other black holes.
