To advance space colonization, team explores 3D printing in microgravity

Research from West Virginia University students and faculty into how 3D printing works in a weightless environment aims to support long-term exploration and habitation on spaceships, the moon or Mars.

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IXPE telescope untangles theories surrounding historic supernova remnant

NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope has captured the first polarized X-ray imagery of the supernova remnant SN 1006. The new results expand scientists' understanding of the relationship between magnetic fields and the flow of high-energy particles from exploding stars.

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Mouse embryos grown in space for first time: Japan researchers

Mouse embryos have been grown on the International Space Station and developed normally in the first study indicating it could be possible for humans to reproduce in space, a group of Japanese scientists said.

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JWST takes a detailed look at Jupiter's moon Ganymede

Nature doesn't conform to our ideas of neatly-contained categories. Many things in nature blur the lines we try to draw around them. That's true of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system

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Asteroids in the solar system could contain undiscovered, superheavy elements

For centuries, the quest for new elements was a driving force in many scientific disciplines. Understanding an atom's structure and the development of nuclear science allowed scientists to accomplish the old goal of alchemists—turning one element into another.

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Russian space boss warns ISS equipment beyond warranty

Moscow's Roscosmos space chief warned Friday that most Russian equipment on the International Space Station (ISS) was beyond its warranty, weeks after the station's Russian segment sprang another coolant leak.

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After DART smashed into Dimorphous, what happened to the larger asteroid Didymos?

NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) slammed into asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, changing its orbital period. Ground and space-based telescopes turned to watch the event unfold, not only to study what happened to the asteroid, but also to help inform planetary defense efforts that might one day be needed to mitigate potential collisions with our planet.

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'Mind-blowing': Astronomers spot most distant radio burst yet

Eight billion years ago, something happened in a distant galaxy that sent an incredibly powerful blast of radio waves hurtling through the universe.

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India conducts space flight test ahead of planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025

India successfully carried out Saturday the first of a series of key test flights after overcoming a technical glitch ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space by 2025, the space agency said.

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NASA's Voyager team focuses on software patch, thrusters

Engineers for NASA's Voyager mission are taking steps to help make sure both spacecraft, launched in 1977, continue to explore interstellar space for years to come.

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Juno completes its closest flyby of Io yet

Jupiter's ocean moons capture most of our attention because of their potential habitability. But Io, Jupiter's bad-boy volcanic moon, is in a class of its own. There's nothing else like it in the solar system, and NASA's Juno spacecraft captured new images of the volcanic satellite during its closest approach yet.

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There are 14,000 potentially hazardous city-killing asteroids left to find

Everyone likes a cool infographic, right? Does that statement hold even if the infographic points out a gap in our knowledge that could kill millions of people? Because that's what a cool-looking infographic NASA released on October 16th does.

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NASA's innovative rocket nozzle paves way for deep space missions

NASA recently built and tested an additively-manufactured—or 3D printed—rocket engine nozzle made of aluminum, making it lighter than conventional nozzles and setting the course for deep space flights that can carry more payloads.

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This dark nebula hides an enormous star

The birth of a star is a spectacular event that plays out behind a veil of gas and dust. It's a detailed process that takes millions of years to play out. Once a star leaves its protostar stage behind and begins its life of fusion, the star's powerful radiative output blows the veil away.

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Webb discovers new feature in Jupiter's atmosphere

Jupiter has some of the most conspicuous atmospheric features in our solar system. The planet's Great Red Spot, large enough to envelop Earth, is nearly as well known as some of the various rivers and mountains on the planet we call home.

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Astronomers comb telescope archive and find microsecond-duration burst

An international team of researchers led by Dutch Ph.D. candidate Mark Snelders (ASTRON and University of Amsterdam) has discovered radio pulses from the distant universe that last only millionths of a second. They found these microsecond bursts after a meticulous examination of archival data from a known millisecond source. It's unclear how the ultrafast bursts are created.

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New observations confirm important step in star formation

New observations have confirmed a key step in the process of star formation: a rotating "cosmic wind" made of molecules, which is vitally important for collapsing gas clouds to contract sufficiently so as to form a hot, dense young star.

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Cataclysmic variable Swift J0503.7-2819 investigated by researchers

Using various spacecraft and ground-based observatories, an international team of astronomers has performed a multi-wavelength study of a cataclysmic variable system known as Swift J0503.7-2819. Results of the study, published October 11 on the pre-print server arXiv, deliver important insights into the nature of this system.

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Bursting activity of magnetar SGR J1830–0645 observed with AstroSat

Using India's AstroSat spacecraft, astronomers have observed a magnetar known as SGR J1830–0645 during its recent bursting activity. Results of the observational campaign, published October 6 on the preprint server arXiv and accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shed more light on the properties and behavior of this object.

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Simulating the three-dimensional morphology of kilonovae

An advanced new three-dimensional (3D) computer simulation of the light emitted following a merger of two neutron stars has produced a similar sequence of spectroscopic features to an observed kilonova.

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New patterns in sun's layers could help scientists solve solar mystery

Astronomers are one step closer to understanding one of the most enduring solar mysteries, having captured unprecedented data from the sun's magnetic field.

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Study shows need for ITU to tighten regulations for low orbit satellites as filing numbers grow

A small team of political scientists and astronomers at the University of British Columbia has conducted a study of the number of filings to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) by entities wishing to send satellites into low orbit and has found the numbers growing so fast that soon there will not be room for new satellite deployments. In their paper is published in the journal Science.

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Searching for concentrated biosignatures in an ancient Mars mud lake

A landmark discovery by a collaborative team led by the Planetary Science Institute's Alexis Rodriguez has unveiled evidence of sedimentary plains created by aquifer drainage within Martian collapse formations termed chaotic terrains.

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Vast $2 billion innovation hub is eyed at NASA Ames Silicon Valley complex

A vast $2 billion innovation hub is being eyed at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, a complex that's poised to become a birthplace for cutting-edge technologies.

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Hypervelocity impact experiments probe the origin of organics on the dwarf planet Ceres

One of the most exciting findings from NASA's Dawn mission is that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, hosts complex organics. The discovery of aliphatic molecules, which consist of carbon and hydrogen chains, in conjunction with evidence that Ceres has abundant water ice and may have been an ocean world, means this dwarf planet might have once harbored the main ingredients associated with life as we know it.

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Nuclear astrophysical team confirms reaction path of rapid proton capture process

Type I X-ray bursts are the most frequent types of thermonuclear stellar explosions in the galaxy. As the key nucleosynthesis process in X-ray bursts, the rapid proton capture process (rp-process) is an important scientific frontier in nuclear astrophysics. Titanium-42 is a typical branching nucleus in the rp-process, so the accuracy of 42Ti(p, γ)43V reaction rate is crucial for comprehensively understanding the reaction path of rp-process in X-ray bursts.

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China chooses the site for TRIDENT neutrino detector

China is building a new neutrino detector named TRIDENT, the Tropical Deep-sea Neutrino Telescope. They're building it in the South China Sea, near the equator. This next-generation neutrino telescope will feature improved sensitivity and should help clear up the mystery around cosmic rays and their origins.

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Two new pulsars detected in globular cluster NGC 6522

Using the MeerKAT radio telescope, an international team of astronomers has observed a Galactic globular cluster known as NGC 6522. As a result, they have discovered two new isolated pulsars in this cluster. The finding is reported in a paper published October 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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NASA journeys to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche

It's a world like no other: a metal-rich asteroid that could be the remnants of a small planet, or perhaps an entirely new type of celestial body unknown to science.

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'Ring of fire' solar eclipse will cut across the Americas, stretching from Oregon to Brazil

A rare "ring of fire" eclipse of the sun cuts across the Americas on Saturday, stretching from Oregon to Brazil.

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Canadian-French astrophysicist Hubert Reeves dies aged 91

Canadian-French astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, who was renowned for his work popularizing space science, died Friday aged 91, his son said in a post on Facebook.

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More JWST observations are finding fewer early massive galaxies

There's a common pattern in science. We develop some new process or tool that allows us to gather all kinds of data we've never had before, the data threatens to overturn all we've assumed about some long-established theory, and then the dust settles. Unfortunately, the early stage of this process generates a lot of sensationalism in the press. Early results from the JWST are a good example of this.

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Here's how NASA's Psyche mission could unveil the interior secrets of planets

It's unlikely to be a bad omen, but NASA's mission Psyche is currently due to launch on Friday 13 October. Lifting off at 10:19 EDT on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, it faces a perilous journey and isn't scheduled for arrival at its namesake asteroid, 16 Pscyhe, until 2029.

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Psyche spacecraft launched to mysterious and rare metal asteroid in first mission of its kind

NASA's Psyche spacecraft rocketed away Friday on a six-year journey to a rare metal-covered asteroid.

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What would it take to see exoplanet volcanoes?

Even with the clearest image from the best telescope in the world, astronomers still won't know what they're looking at. It takes a fundamental understanding of physics, particularly how light works, to glean scientific data from the images that telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) capture.

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NASA asteroid sample contains life-critical water and carbon

A sample collected from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu contains abundant water and carbon, NASA revealed on Wednesday, offering more evidence for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space.

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Stellar fountain of youth with turbulent formation history in the center of our galaxy

An international team led by Dr. Florian Peißker at the University of Cologne's Institute of Astrophysics has analyzed in detail a young star cluster in the immediate vicinity of the super massive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) in the center of our galaxy and showed that it is significantly younger than expected.

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NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample curation steps closer to final reveal

As the astromaterials curation team at NASA's Johnson Space Center continues to collect the bonus asteroid Bennu particles located outside the OSIRIS-REx TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, they've also completed additional steps toward disassembly and reveal of the bulk asteroid sample inside the head.

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Large-scale bent radio jet detected in galaxy cluster Abell 514

Astronomers have conducted deep low-frequency radio observations of the galaxy cluster Abell 514, using the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT). In their results, they detected a large-scale bent radio jet in this cluster. The finding is reported in a paper published October 2 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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Researchers identify largest ever solar storm in ancient 14,300-year-old tree rings

An international team of scientists have discovered a huge spike in radiocarbon levels 14,300 years ago by analyzing ancient tree-rings found in the French Alps.

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Saving Mt. Wilson Observatory: Inside the long battle to maintain the spot where we found our place in the universe

Los Angeles was once the best place in the world to see the universe.

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Study quantifies satellite brightness, challenges ground-based astronomy

The ability to have access to the Internet or use a mobile phone anywhere in the world is taken more and more for granted, but the brightness of Internet and telecommunications satellites that enable global communications networks could pose problems for ground-based astronomy. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aerospace engineer Siegfried Eggl coordinated an international study confirming recently deployed satellites are as bright as stars seen by the unaided eye.

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It's time to start worrying about space junk around the moon, too

It's getting crowded up there. An increase in military, commercial and scientific launches, coupled with a lower cost for rideshare cubesat launches, means lots more space junk to deal with in coming years. And we're not just talking about low Earth orbit; the moon and cis-lunar (near lunar space) is about to become busy as well.

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Spain's first private rocket successfully lifts off

A Spanish company launched the country's first private rocket on Saturday in a step towards bringing Spain into the exclusive club of space-faring nations.

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Virgin Galactic carries first Pakistani into space

Adventurer Namira Salim became the first Pakistani to travel into space on Friday, riding aboard Virgin Galactic's fifth successful flight in five months, the US company announced.

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Pulsars may make dark matter glow

The central question in the ongoing hunt for dark matter is: what is it made of? One possible answer is that dark matter consists of particles known as axions. A team of astrophysicists, led by researchers from the universities of Amsterdam and Princeton, has now shown that if dark matter consists of axions, it may reveal itself in the form of a subtle additional glow coming from pulsating stars. Their work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Hubble captures intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 6951

Bright blue spiral arms twist around the bright-white center of this starry galaxy. This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 6951, an intermediate spiral galaxy 78 million light-years away in the Cepheus constellation.

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Gravitational distortion of time helps tell modified gravity apart from a dark force

With his theory of General Relativity in 1915, Albert Einstein revolutionized how we think about our universe. Rather than the cosmos simply providing the room for the planets and stars to orbit each other, space and time themselves were now dynamical entities in one ever-evolving play with matter and light.

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Old stars don't have hot Jupiters, suggests study

As we began to discover hundreds, then thousands of exoplanets, we found that there were two types of worlds unlike anything in our solar system. The first are super-Earths. These worlds straddle the line between large rocky worlds like Earth and small gas planets like Neptune. The second are hot Jupiters. Large gas giants that orbit their star in a matter of days.

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V0610 Virgo is a low-mass contact binary, observations find

Astronomers from the Binary Systems of South and North (BSN) project have conducted photometric observations of a distant binary star known as V0610 Virgo. Results of the observation campaign, published Sept. 23 in a research paper on the pre-print server arXiv, indicate that V0610 Virgo is a low-mass contact binary system.

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