Japan’s asteroid-exploring spacecraft has practiced its last task before heading home — and it made a nifty image as well. The Hayabusa2 mission has been studying a space rock called Ryugu for more than a year. During that time, the spacecraft has snagged samples of the rock, created an artificial crater and released three small […]
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A mysterious star whose repeated bouts of darkening might be due to “alien megastructures,” according to some researchers’ conjectures, may now have more than a dozen counterparts that display similarly mystifying behavior, a new study finds. Further research into all of these stars might help solve the puzzle of their bewildering flickering, the study’s author […]
Read MoreChina’s Yutu-2 moon rover captured this image from the edge of the small crater where it found a mysterious, gel-like material. (Image credit: CNSA/CLEP) China’s lunar exploration program has released images that give us a glimpse of the mysterious material discovered on the far side of the moon. Yutu-2, the lunar rover for China’s Chang’e-4 […]
Read MoreA Chinese Long March 11 rocket successfully launched five new remote-sensing satellites today (Sept. 19). The rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s Gobi Desert at 2:42 p.m. local time (2:42 a.m. EDT; 0642 GMT), lofting the Zhuhai-1 Group-3 satellites into orbit. Those satellites will join a commercial satellite constellation built […]
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On Friday (Sept. 20), students around the world will walk out of their classrooms and gather in coordinated protests to highlight the global crisis created by climate change. The goal? To get elected officials and industry leaders to actually act to stop the looming catastrophe. Climate change poses a dire threat to humanity, and politicians […]
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Even as its orbiter settles into work, India’s hopes of resurrecting its moon lander are quickly evaporating as the country marks two weeks from its attempt to softly touch down on the lunar surface. The Chandrayaan-2 mission’s lander, Vikram, began its descent near the south pole of the moon on Sept. 6. For many minutes, […]
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SpaceX wants to buy out the properties of residents in a community located only a few miles away its Starhopper launch site in south Texas, according to a report. The company’s Starhopper flights made headlines this summer as the rocket prototype flew as high as 500 feet (about 150 meters) in altitude. Starhopper fits in […]
Read MoreThis article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. On Sept. 7, India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission deployed its Vikram lander for an attempted landing at the Moon’s south pole. Communications with the lander were lost just minutes prior to the scheduled landing. Recent imaging suggests that Vikram may have […]
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In December 2017 and March 2018, The New York Times released three allegedly declassified videos showing U.S. Navy pilots trailing some unidentified flying objects. The mystery crafts moved at hypersonic speeds, flying tens of thousands of feet above the Earth with no distinct wings, engines or visible signs of propulsion whatsoever. Were they flying saucers? […]
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It could have been bad. There was a 5.6% chance that two big pieces of space debris — Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis II experimental habitat and Russia’s defunct Cosmos 1300 satellite — would collide high above Earth early this morning (Sept. 18). That warning came yesterday (Sept. 17) via Twitter from Bigelow Aerospace representatives, who cited analyses […]
Read MoreNASA’s effort to develop and deploy a small space station in orbit around the moon now has its own logo. The agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston revealed the Gateway program logo in an update to its employee online newsletter on Tuesday (Sept. 17). The Gateway, which is sometimes referred to as the Lunar Gateway, […]
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It’s not quite a “Stairway to Heaven,” but scientists have come up with what appears to be a perfectly feasible plan to build an elevator to the Moon. Or, more accurately, a Spaceline from the Moon to the Earth. In a paper published in late August, astrophysicists Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandson of the University […]
Read MoreConsider the possibility that an asteroid may have transformed the picture of life on Earth — but forget the dinosaurs and the massive crater, and rewind an extra 400 million years from that dramatic moment. Back then, life was primarily an oceanic affair and backbones were the latest in arrival on the anatomy scene. But […]
Read MoreBy 2024, NASA plans to land the next two people on the moon, including the first woman who will ever walk on the lunar surface. But to get there, scientists will first need to understand lunar regolith, Kristen John, principal investigator of NASA’s Hermes Facility, said in a video recently published to NASA’s Johnson Space […]
Read MoreNASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has reportedly failed to spot India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar lander, which apparently crashed during its Sept. 6 touchdown attempt. LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera instrument, or LROC, imaged the intended south pole touchdown site for the lander, which is called Vikram, as planned yesterday (Sept. 17), Aviation Week’s Mark Carreau reported. […]
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What might it take to feed a million people on Mars? Lab-grown meat, tunnel-grown crops and cricket farms, a new study finds. When it comes to plans for crewed missions to Mars, NASA typically assumes round trips with only brief stopovers on the Red Planet. However, commercial space companies have emerged with the goal of […]
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Today (Sept. 18) a unique airborne space observatory will perform its first scientific flight over Europe. Its mission will be to study activity around a pair of co-orbiting black holes about 600 million light-years away from Earth. SOFIA, or Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet that ascends to our […]
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NASA has partnered with Advanced Space of Boulder, Colorado, to develop a cubesat satellite that will launch to the same lunar orbit targeted for the agency’s Gateway outpost. The satellite, called the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), is scheduled to launch as early as December 2020 and will be the […]
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Enceladus seems to be acting like a “snow-cannon,” pumping water into Saturn’s orbit and covering its neighboring moons in snow, which has made them highly reflective, new research suggests. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spent over a decade studying Saturn. The probe collected incredible images and data about the planet and its system, including the planet’s rings […]
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Back in 2017, a gravitational wave rang across Earth like the clear tone of a bell. It stretched and squished every person, ant and scientific instrument on the planet as it passed through our region of space. Now, researchers have gone back and studied that wave, and found hidden data in it — data that […]
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