The Department of Defense released an image taken from the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that floated over the United States earlier this month.
Space News & Blog Articles
Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.
California Science Center reopens retired space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay
Space shuttle Endeavour is about to get its 'boom' back. The California Science Center has reopened the orbiter's payload bay to complete outfitting the vehicle's cargo hold.
Photos: Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon roll out to pad 39A
SpaceX transported a Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft to pad 39A on Wednesday, Feb. 22, for final preparations to carry a four-man crew to the International Space Station on NASA’s Crew-6 mission.
After completing the quarter-mile trip from SpaceX’s hangar, the Falcon 9 was raised vertical on pad 39A using hydraulic pistons early Thursday, Feb. 23, in preparation for a static fire test Friday.
The 215-foot-tall (65-meter) rocket is powered by a brand new first stage booster, numbered B1078 in SpaceX’s inventory. The Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is going for its fourth flight to space after debuting on the Demo-2 mission in 2020, SpaceX’s first human spaceflight mission.
The Falcon 9 is set to take off Monday, Feb. 27, at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) with NASA commander Steve Bowen, pilot Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Bowen is a veteran of three space shuttle missions, while the other crew members are spaceflight rookies.
'New Eye on the Universe' illuminates the James Webb Space Telescope's latest marvels on PBS Nova. Watch it for free.
PBS Nova's "New Eye on the Universe" returns to the James Webb Space Telescope for more fantastic discoveries.
A new Starship Troopers: Extermination trailer has dropped – would you like to know more?
Come on you apes, you want to live forever? It's time to enlist as a new trailer for Starship Troopers: Extermination is here.
Powerful X-class flare spat out a rare 'solar tsunami,' and you can hear it smashing into Earth
The sun recently spat out an X-class solar flare, one of the most powerful it can emit, which triggered a rare shockwave across the sun's surface and caused radio blackouts on Earth.
“The Universe Breakers”: Six Galaxies That are Too Big, Too Early
In the first data taken last summer with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the new James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found six galaxies from a time when the Universe was only 3% of its current age, just 500-700 million years after the Big Bang. While its incredible JWST saw these galaxies from so long ago, the data also pose a mystery.
These galaxies should be mere infants, but instead they resemble galaxies of today, containing 100 times more stellar mass than astronomers were expecting to see so soon after the beginning of the Universe. If confirmed, this finding calls into question the current thinking of galaxy formation and challenges most models of cosmology.
“These objects are way more massive than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modeled light from these galaxies. “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”
The data was taken by JWST as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) program and was the first dataset released as part of the telescope’s early release program, which is helping to showcase the new telescope’s observing capabilities and allow the astronomical community to learn how to get the most out of their observing time with the various instruments.
NIRCam’s infrared eyes are capable of detecting light that was emitted by the oldest stars and galaxies, allowing scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it. The targeted area of the sky for these sets of observations was a “blank” field – where no stars or galaxies had ever been seen before — and overlapped with existing Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging.
Amazon gets a green light to launch 3,000-satellite Kuiper constellation
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has accepted Amazon's updated orbital debris mitigation plan and approved the company's 3,000-satellite Kuiper constellation.
Newly discovered type of salt could explain the mystery of Europa's ice cracks
Jupiter's moon Europa is crisscrossed with red streaks that have chemical compositions like nothing on Earth. The discovery of a new type of salt ice may finally solve this mystery.
Elusive Planet Nine could be surrounded by hot moons, and that's how we'd find it
The mysterious Planet Nine may have up to 20 moons that could be superheated by the hypothetical planet's gravitational pull, making them easy to spot.
Fortune Favors the Prepared Astrophotographer
An unexpected total lunar eclipse surprises an amateur astrophotographer.
The post Fortune Favors the Prepared Astrophotographer appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
SpaceX, Amazon, US space industry to talk climate change with VP Kamala Harris (exclusive)
Climate change will be raised with VP Kamala Harris after the debut meeting of a group advising the Harris-run National Space Council on government policy direction.
DJI Mini 3 review
The DJI Mini 3 delivers a more affordable beginner option with great image quality.
Eyes on Hera: Asteroid mission’s cameras ready
ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence is about to gain its sight. Two complete and fully tested Asteroid Framing Cameras have reached OHB in Germany for integration aboard Hera’s payload module. This instrument will provide the very first star-like view of Hera’s target for the mission to steer towards the Dimorphos asteroid, which last year had its orbit altered by an impact with NASA’s DART mission.
Why space is the best setting for horror
In space, no one can hear you scream, but there is plenty to scream about when it comes to space horror.
'Star Trek: Picard' episode 2 is unexpectedly excellent
Last week's season-three premiere of "Star Trek: Picard" would've undoubtedly benefited from being a two-parter combined with this episode.
The ozone layer: a whole new world
Video: 00:08:47
In the 1980s, scientists discovered a gaping hole in Earth's ozone layer, caused by humanmade chemicals. But thanks to the historical Montreal Protocol, the world came together to take bold action to save our planet. Decades later, we can see the steady recovery of the ozone hole. How did we do it? And what does space have to do with it? Join us as we explore the journey of the ozone hole, from its alarming discovery to the incredible strides made to fix it, and how satellites are helping us track its recovery.
The Milky Way's monster black hole is destroying a mysterious dust cloud
Astronomers are observing the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy tearing apart a strange dust cloud in real time.
James Webb Space Telescope reveals packed stars in Milky Way's oldest cluster (photos)
The James Webb Space Telescope has looked inside one of the oldest components of our Milky Way galaxy, the Messier 92 globular cluster located some 27,000 light-years away from Earth.
Clouds of Carbon Dust Seen When the Universe was Less Than a Billion Years Old
The Milky Way Galaxy contains an estimated one hundred billion stars. Between these lies the Interstellar Medium (ISM), a region permeated by gas and dust grains. This dust is largely composed of heavier elements, including silicate minerals, ice, carbon, and iron compounds. This dust plays a key role in the evolution of galaxies, facilitating the gravitational collapse of gas clouds to form new stars. This galactic dust is measurable by how it attenuates starlight from distant galaxies, causing it to shift from ultraviolet to far-infrared radiation.
However, the origin of various dust grains is still a mystery, especially during the early Universe when heavier elements are thought to have been scarce. Previously, scientists believed that elements like carbon took hundreds of millions of years to form and could not have existed before about 2.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Using data obtained by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), an international team of astronomers and astrophysicists report the detection of carbonaceous grains around a galaxy that existed roughly 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
The research team comprised astronomers and astrophysicists from multiple universities and institutes worldwide. This included the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, the Cavendish Laboratory, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab), ASTRO 3D, and the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The paper that describes their findings recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication.
Galaxy GN-z11 superimposed on an image from the GOODS-North survey. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI
The JADES program is an extragalactic survey and a collaborative effort between the JWST Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument teams. The purpose is to conduct deep parallel mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy of roughly 100,000 galaxies in two extragalactic deep fields (GOODS-South (CDF-S) and GOODS-North (HDF)). These fields were previously imaged in the optical, infrared, and ultraviolet (UV) bands by the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS).
