Unraveling the mysteries of the night sky with AI

Technische Universität Ilmenau (Germany) is using artificial intelligence to improve the detection and classification of unidentified phenomena in the night sky. The research team of the group for data-intensive systems and visualization collaborated with the American Meteor Society, which initiated the AllSky7, an international network of scientists and amateur astronomers that permanently observes the night sky with specially designed cameras and classifies and assigns all events. The related research was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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MAVEN and EMM make first observations of Mars' patchy proton aurora

NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission and the United Arab Emirates' Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) have released joint observations of dynamic proton aurora events at Mars. Remote auroral observations by EMM paired with in-situ plasma observations made by MAVEN open new avenues for understanding the Martian atmosphere. This collaboration was made possible by recent data-sharing between the two missions and highlights the value of multi-point observations in space. A study of these findings appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Astronomers discover seven new pulsars

Using the Large Phased Array (LPA) radio telescope of Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory (PRAO) in Russia, astronomers have detected seven new pulsars and determined their basic parameters. The finding is reported in a paper published August 18 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

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New launch attempt Saturday for NASA's Moon rocket

NASA will make a second attempt to launch its powerful new Moon rocket on Saturday, after scrubbing a test flight earlier in the week, an official said Tuesday.

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Engineers solve data glitch on NASA's Voyager 1

Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data.

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Deriving the magnetopause position from wide field-of-view soft X-ray imager simulation

Imaging techniques provide essential information in astronomical and space physics studies. The soft X-ray imager (SXI) will obtain images of the Earth's magnetosphere from solar wind charge exchange emission in a global view. However, it is a challenge to reconstruct its 3D structures from the observed 2D image(s). Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) will have a soft X-ray imager (SXI) onboard, which is a powerful tool to study the geo-space environment under various solar wind conditions.

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Yeast bound for moon will provide clues on how radiation impacts astronauts

A team of researchers led by CU Boulder is sending some unexpected hitchhikers to the moon: Twelve bags filled with baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), the same kind of hard-working cells that make bread rise and ferment beer and wine.

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Mid-infrared flare observed in the galaxy NGC 3786

Using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), astronomers from South Korea and China have detected a mid-infrared flare in an active spiral galaxy known as NGC 3786. The researchers assume that this peculiar flare may have originated from a tidal disruption event (TDE). The discovery was detailed in a paper published August 17 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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NASA says Friday launch of giant Moon rocket possible

A test flight of NASA's powerful new Moon rocket may be possible on Friday, officials said, after the US space agency scrubbed Monday's launch because of an engine issue.

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Discovery of the oldest visible planetary nebula hosted by a 500-million-year-old galactic cluster

An international team of astronomers led by members of the Laboratory for Space Research (LSR) and Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), have discovered a rare celestial jewel—a so-called Planetary Nebula (PN) inside a 500 million-year-old galactic open cluster (OC) called M37 (also known as NGC2099). This is a very rare finding of high astrophysical value. Their findings have just been published in the open-access Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Engine problem leads NASA to scrub launch of new moon rocket

A fuel leak and then an engine problem during final liftoff preparations led NASA to scrub the launch of its mighty new moon rocket Monday morning on a shakedown flight with three test dummies aboard.

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NASA shoots for the Moon, on its way to Mars

NASA's most powerful rocket yet is set to blast off Monday on the maiden voyage of a mission to take humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars.

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NASA fuels moon rocket for liftoff on 1st test flight

NASA began fueling its new moon rocket early Monday for liftoff on a test flight to put a crew capsule into lunar orbit for the first time in 50 years.

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NASA moon rocket on track for launch despite lightning hits

NASA's new moon rocket remained on track to blast off on a crucial test flight Monday, despite a series of lightning strikes at the launch pad.

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'Sight to behold': tourists flock to Florida for Moon rocket launch

Seeing a rocket blast off to the Moon is "a once-in-a-lifetime thing to experience," says Joanne Bostandji.

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Russia's only female cosmonaut says 'ready' for Crew Dragon flight

Russia's only active female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, said Friday she was ready for her upcoming flight to the International Space Station aboard Space X's Crew Dragon.

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Black hole collisions could help us measure how fast the universe is expanding

A black hole is usually where information goes to disappear—but scientists may have found a trick to use its last moments to tell us about the history of the universe.

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Space mission shows Earth's water may be from asteroids: study

Water may have been brought to Earth by asteroids from the outer edges of the solar system, scientists said after analysing rare samples collected on a six-year Japanese space mission.

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Ever wanted to name a planet? Here's how to name one found by the James Webb Telescope

Anyone can name a star online, but the International Astronomical Union is offering a rare space opportunity: to name a planet discovered by the groundbreaking James Webb Telescope.

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Astronomers detect new eclipsing post-common-envelope binary

Astronomers have conducted photometric and spectroscopic observations of a binary system known as TIC 60040774. Results of the observational campaign shed more light on the properties of this system, revealing that it is an eclipsing post-common-envelope binary. The study was published August 5 on arXiv.org.

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The new generation of Starlink satellites remain above the accepted brightness threshold

It's one of the stranger sights of the modern Space Age. Recently, we found ourselves under the relatively dark skies of southern Spain. Sure enough, within a few minutes, we caught sight of a chain of flashing "stars" winking in and out of view in quick succession.

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All systems go in Houston as NASA prepares return to Moon

Rick LaBrode has worked at NASA for 37 years, but he says the American quest to return to the Moon is by far the crowning moment of his career.

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US astronaut Jessica Watkins sets sights on Moon... and Mars

If you had the choice, would you rather go to the Moon or Mars?

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Neutrino rocket model to explain the origin of high-velocity pulsars

The first pulsar was discovered in 1967. With an increase in pulsar observations, astronomers have found that some pulsars have a proper motion velocity greater than 1000 km/s, and the number of such pulsars is growing each year.

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Brightest stars in the night sky can strip Neptune-sized planets to their rocky cores

Over the last 25 years, astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around stars in our galaxy, but more than 99% of them orbit smaller stars—from red dwarfs to stars slightly more massive than our sun, which is considered an average-sized star.

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Want to colonize Mars? Talk to this outer space anthropologist first

Maybe infinity and beyond should wait.

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Resolving the core of the J1924-2914 blazar with the Event Horizon Telescope

Scientists at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) have imaged the distant blazar J1924-2914 with unprecedented angular resolution, revealing previously unseen details of the source structure. Blazars are powerful active galactic nuclei, in which supermassive black holes eject relativistic jets directed along our line of sight. A blazar can outshine its entire galaxy and may be observed from a distance of billions of light-years with our radio telescopes.

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Solar-like oscillations and ellipsoidal variations detected in binary system 12 Boötis

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected solar-like oscillations and ellipsoidal variations in the light curve of a binary system known as 12 Boötis (or 12 Boo for short). The finding is reported in a paper published August 3 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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Subsurface water on Mars defy expectations: Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments

A new analysis of seismic data from NASA's Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises.

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Building on the moon and Mars? You'll need extraterrestrial cement for that

Sustained space exploration will require infrastructure that doesn't currently exist: buildings, housing, rocket landing pads.

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One more clue to the moon's origin

Humankind has maintained an enduring fascination with the moon. It was not until Galileo's time, however, that scientists really began study it. Over the course of nearly five centuries, researchers put forward numerous, much debated theories as to how the moon was formed. Now, geochemists, cosmochemists, and petrologists at ETH Zurich shed new light on the moon's origin story.

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Madrid meteor's cometary origins unearthed

A fireball spotted over Madrid has had its astronomical ancestry unearthed. While it ended its days burning up in Earth's atmosphere on 31 July this year, the fragment began its life as part of Comet 169P/NEAT, responsible for the annual Alpha Capricornids meteor shower.

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Exposed! International Space Station tests organisms, materials in space

Space may look empty, but it contains extreme temperatures, high levels of background radiation, micrometeoroids, and the unfiltered glare of the sun. In addition, materials and equipment on the outside of the International Space Station are exposed to atomic oxygen (AO) and other charged particles as it orbits the Earth at the very edge of our atmosphere. Only the hardiest materials, equipment, and organisms can withstand this harsh environment, and scientists conducting research on the orbiting laboratory have identified some of them for a variety of potential uses.

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First-ever detection of gas in a circumplanetary disk

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and partners at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made the first-ever detection of gas in an circumplanetary disk. What's more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet. The results of the research are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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New faint, distant and cold brown dwarf discovered

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers have detected a new faint, distant, and cold brown dwarf. The newly found object, designated GLASS-JWST-BD1, turns out to be about 31 times more massive than Jupiter. The discovery was detailed in a paper published July 29 on arXiv.org.

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NASA's moon-observing CubeSat is ready for Artemis launch

NASA's water-scouting CubeSat is now poised to hitch a ride to lunar orbit. Not much bigger than a shoe box, Lunar IceCube's data will have an outsized impact on lunar science.

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Commercial satellite race raises calls for more regulations

Rapidly evolving technology and space debris reported in several places around the world—including pieces of a Chinese Long March 5B Rocket in the Indian Ocean—signal the need for a new era for regulation of space, Flinders University experts say.

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Jupiter missions could also help search for dark matter

In a recent study published in the Journal of High Energy Physics, two researchers from Brown University demonstrated how data from past missions to Jupiter can help scientists examine dark matter, one of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe. The reason past Jupiter missions were chosen is due to the extensive amount of data gathered about the largest planet in the solar system, most notably from the Galileo and Juno orbiters. The elusive nature and composition of dark matter continues to elude scientists, both figuratively and literally, because it does not emit any light. So why do scientists continue to study this mysterious—and completely invisible—phenomena?

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UPK 39 and UPK 41 form a primordial binary open cluster, study finds

Using data from ESA's Gaia satellite and the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), astronomers have investigated three open clusters near the Aquila Rift cloud. They found that two of them, designated UPK 39 and UPK 41, constitute a primordial binary open cluster. The discovery is reported in a paper published July 28 on arXiv.org.

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Researchers report solar energetic particle event observed by China's Tianwen-1 mission

Researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have reported a solar energetic particle (SEP) event observed by the Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer (MEPA) carried on China's Tianwen-1 (TW-1) spacecraft. As the first scientific report based on MEPA, the paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Researchers aim to turn Martian air, dirt and sunlight into iron

A team of researchers, led by Swinburne's Professor Akbar Rhamdhani, has published the first detailed study of its kind on metal production on another planet.

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South Korean spacecraft launched to the moon, country's 1st

South Korea joined the stampede to the moon Thursday with the launch of a lunar orbiter that will scout out future landing spots.

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Five of the top discoveries aboard NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars

Revealing the potentially habitable climate of ancient Mars is a key part of NASA's mission to explore and understand the unknown, to inspire and benefit humanity—and for 10 years, the Curiosity rover has been on the case at the Red Planet.

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Blue Origin sends first Egyptian and Portugese nationals to space

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin on Thursday launched six people to space, including the first from Egypt and Portugal, on the company's sixth crewed flight.

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Wide view of early universe hints at galaxy among earliest ever detected

Two new images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope show what may be among the earliest galaxies ever observed. Both images include objects from more than 13 billion years ago, and one offers a much wider field of view than Webb's First Deep Field image, which was released amid great fanfare July 12. The images represent some of the first out of a major collaboration of astronomers and other academic researchers teaming with NASA and global partners to uncover new insights about the universe.

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The final frontier? Just a slice of Spanish sausage

A red ball of spicy fire with luminous patches glowing menacingly against a black background.

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SpaceX debris discovered in Australian sheep paddock

A charred chunk of space junk found jutting from a paddock by an Australian sheep farmer was confirmed to be part of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX missions by authorities Thursday.

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Team troubleshoots asteroid-bound Lucy spacecraft across millions of miles

Following the successful launch of NASA's Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, a group of engineers huddled around a long conference table in Titusville, Florida. Lucy was mere hours into its 12-year flight, but an unexpected challenge had surfaced for the first-ever Trojan asteroids mission.

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Video: Does space trash ever naturally break down?

Remember when Elon Musk launched a car into space? That car's not just peacefully drifting through a vacuum—it's hurtling around the sun at 63,592 miles per hour, being bombarded by solar radiation. It might be in pieces, but these are not the same pieces it would be in if it were down here on Earth. That's because the environment in space breaks down materials differently.

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The record for the farthest galaxy was just broken again, now just 250 million years after the Big Bang

In a recent study submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a collaborative research team has utilized the first set of data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovering a galaxy candidate, CEERS-93316, that formed approximately 250 million years after the Bing Bang, which also set a new redshift record of z = 16.7. This finding is extremely intriguing as it demonstrates the power of JWST, which only started sending back its first set of data a few weeks ago. CEERS stands for Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey, and was specifically created for imaging with JWST.

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Webb telescope captures colorful Cartwheel Galaxy

The James Webb Space Telescope has peered through time and huge amounts of dust to capture a new image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing the spinning ring of color in unprecedented clarity, NASA and the European Space Agency said Tuesday.

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