Distant 'space snowman' unlocks mystery of how some dormant deep space objects become 'ice bombs'

A new study is shaking up what scientists thought they knew about distant objects in the far reaches of the solar system, starting with an object called the space snowman.

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A cosmic 'speed camera' just revealed the staggering speed of neutron star jets in a world first

How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it turns out, is about one-third the speed of light, as our team has just revealed in a new study published in Nature.

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Curiosity rover searches for new clues about Mars' ancient water

NASA's Curiosity rover has begun exploring a new region of Mars, one that could reveal more about when liquid water disappeared once and for all from the Red Planet's surface. Billions of years ago, Mars was much wetter and probably warmer than it is today. Curiosity is getting a new look into that more Earth-like past as it drives along and eventually crosses the Gediz Vallis channel, a winding, snake-like feature that—from space, at least—appears to have been carved by an ancient river.

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Canada's Niagara region declares a state of emergency to prepare for an influx of eclipse viewers

Ontario's Niagara Region has declared a state of emergency as it prepares to welcome up to a million visitors for the solar eclipse in early April.

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Image: Hubble finds a field of stars

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a globular cluster called NGC 1651. Like another recent globular cluster image, NGC 1651 is about 162,000 light-years away in the largest and brightest of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

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Arecibo Observatory telescope outfitted with a wideband cryogenic system to expand its capabilities

Constructed within a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico, the 305-meter-wide Arecibo Telescope played a part in numerous discoveries, including the first detection of an exoplanet. It was the largest radio telescope in the United States from 1963 until it collapsed in 2020.

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Gravitational waves may have made human life possible

Could it be that human existence depends on gravitational waves? Some key elements in our biological makeup may come from astrophysical events that occur because gravitational waves exist, a research team headed by John R. Ellis of Kings College London suggests.

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Three-year study of young stars with NASA's Hubble enters new chapter

In the largest and one of the most ambitious Hubble Space Telescope programs ever executed, a team of scientists and engineers collected information on almost 500 stars over a three-year period. This effort offers new insights into the stars' formation, evolution, and impact on their surroundings.

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Small satellite launch advances comms experimentation, international collaboration

In the dark, early morning sky of March 21 over NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Virginia coast, a Rocket Lab Electron rocket carried a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) manifest featuring three collaborative research missions into low-Earth orbit—including the latest piece of home-grown space hardware from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

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ALMA finds new molecular signposts in starburst galaxy

The ALMA radio telescope has detected more than 100 molecular species, including many indicative of different star formation and evolution processes, in a galaxy where stars are forming much more actively than in the Milky Way. This is far more molecules than were found in previous studies. Now the team will try to apply this knowledge to other galaxies. The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

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NASA's Europa clipper survives and thrives in 'outer space on Earth'

In less than six months, NASA is set to launch Europa Clipper on a 1.6-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) voyage to Jupiter's ocean moon Europa. From the wild vibrations of the rocket ride to the intense heat and cold of space to the punishing radiation of Jupiter, it will be a journey of extremes. The spacecraft was recently put through a series of hard-core tests at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to ensure it's up to the challenge.

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NASA to launch sounding rockets into moon's shadow during solar eclipse

NASA will launch three sounding rockets during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, to study how Earth's upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet.

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Best geologic map created for a European rover on Mars

A team of European scientists have published the most detailed geological map of Oxia Planum—the landing site for ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. This thorough look at the geography and geological history of the area will help the rover scout the once water-rich terrain, in the search for signs of past and present life.

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SMOS and Swarm team up to spot huge solar storm

The sun erupted over the weekend, flinging electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, even illuminating skies with spectacular aurora borealis. For the first time, ESA's unlikely space weather duo of SMOS and Swarm tracked the severe solar storm—which warped Earth's magnetic field.

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New nearby mini-Neptune exoplanet discovered

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new mini-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a nearby star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-4438 b is about 2.5 times larger than the Earth. The finding was detailed in a paper published March 14 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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Astronomers discover 49 new galaxies in under three hours

An international team of astronomers has discovered 49 new gas-rich galaxies using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. Their research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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This hot Jupiter is doomed to crash into its star in just three million years

In 2008, astronomers with the SuperWASP survey spotted WASP-12b as it transited in front of its star. At the time, it was part of a new class of exoplanets ("hot Jupiters") discovered a little more than a decade before. However, subsequent observations revealed that WASP-12b was the first hot Jupiter observed that orbits so closely to its parent star that it has become deformed. While several plausible scenarios have been suggested to explain these observations, a widely accepted theory is that the planet is being pulled apart as it slowly falls into its star.

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More precise understanding of dark energy achieved using AI

A UCL-led research team has used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to infer the influence and properties of dark energy more precisely from a map of dark and visible matter in the universe covering the last 7 billion years.

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Webb peers into the tendrils of NGC 604

Two new images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) showcase the star-forming region NGC 604, located in the Triangulum galaxy (M33), 2.73 million light-years away from Earth. In these images, cavernous bubbles and stretched-out filaments of gas etch a more detailed and complete tapestry of star birth than seen in the past.

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Maximum mass of non-rotating neutron star precisely inferred to be 2.25 solar masses

A study led by Prof. Fan Yizhong from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has achieved significant precision in determining the upper mass limit for non-rotating neutron stars, a pivotal aspect in the study of nuclear physics and astrophysics.

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Researchers investigate the properties of open cluster NGC 6383

Using data from ESA's Gaia satellite, astronomers from Chile have inspected a young open cluster known as NGC 6383. Results of the new study, presented in a paper published March 1 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield important insights into the properties of this stellar grouping.

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Rethinking galactic origins of interstellar clouds with heavy-element mapping: Research challenges conventional theory

A groundbreaking study of the origins of intermediate-velocity clouds (IVCs) challenges a 20-year-old theory and suggests a new era of deep-space research.

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Jupiter's moon Europa produces less oxygen than we thought—it may affect our chances of finding life there

Jupiter's icy moon Europa has long been thought of as one of the most habitable worlds in the Solar System. Now the Juno mission to Jupiter has directly sampled its atmosphere in detail for the first time. The results, published in Nature Astronomy, show that Europa's icy surface produces less oxygen than we thought.

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We're working out how to solve crimes in space—the final frontier of forensic science

NASA's Artemis program is scheduled to return astronauts to the moon and establish a permanent orbiting laboratory by the end of the decade.

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CSI in space: Analyzing bloodstain patterns in microgravity

As more people seek to go where no man has gone before, researchers are exploring how forensic science can be adapted to extraterrestrial environments.

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Interstellar signal linked to aliens was actually just a truck

Sound waves thought to be from a 2014 meteor fireball north of Papua New Guinea were almost certainly vibrations from a truck rumbling along a nearby road, new Johns Hopkins University-led research shows. The findings raise doubts that materials pulled last year from the ocean are alien materials from that meteor, as was widely reported.

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AI makes a rendezvous in space

Space travel is complex, expensive, and risky. Great sums and valuable payloads are on the line every time one spacecraft docks with another. One slip and a billion-dollar mission could be lost. Aerospace engineers believe that autonomous control, like the sort guiding many cars down the road today, could vastly improve mission safety, but the complexity of the mathematics required for error-free certainty is beyond anything on-board computers can currently handle.

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Scientists solve the riddle of nitrogen-rich galaxy 440 million light years away

For the first time, scientists have been able to explain the mystery behind the unusual chemical composition in one of the universe's most distant galaxies. The state-of-the-art theoretical model that the breakthrough research has established could be a key to our better understanding of the far universe.

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Jet in Jupiter's atmosphere found to fluctuate in roughly four-year periods

A team of planetary scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. has found a jet in Jupiter's atmosphere that fluctuates in roughly four-year periods. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they found the jet and studied its characteristics using data from the Juno spacecraft.

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Subaru Telescope discovers the faintest moon around icy giant planets

Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, including the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers discovered three new natural satellites orbiting the outermost planets in our solar system—one around Uranus and two around Neptune. One of the new moons, initially detected by the Subaru Telescope, is the faintest moon ever discovered by ground-based telescopes.

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More planets than stars: Kepler's legacy

The Kepler mission enabled the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, revealing a deep truth about our place in the cosmos: There are more planets than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The road to this fundamental change in our understanding of the universe, however, required almost 20 years of persistence before the mission became a reality with its selection in 2001.

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Star ripped apart by black hole in rare discovery

Astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have uncovered the closest recorded occurrence of a star being torn apart by a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Using the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) system, on February 22, 2023, the team detected a sudden surge in brightness followed by a rapid dimming in the galaxy NGC 3799, located about 160 million light-years from Earth.

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Extended horizontal branch detected in globular cluster NGC 1835

Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have investigated the stellar population of the globular cluster NGC 1835. They detected a remarkably extended horizontal branch in this system. The discovery, reported February 28 on the preprint server arXiv, marks the first time when such a feature is found in a globular cluster beyond our Milky Way galaxy.

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Study find potential benefits in AI–based systems for spotting hard-to-detect space debris

An increasing number of space objects, debris, and satellites in Low Earth Orbit poses a significant threat of collisions during space operations. The situation is currently monitored by radar and radio-telescopes that track space objects, but much of space debris is composed of very small metallic objects that are difficult to detect.

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New NASA astronauts graduate, eying moon—and Mars

After two years of rigorous training, ten Americans officially became astronauts on Tuesday, and are now eligible for planned NASA missions to the International Space Station, the moon, and—if all goes well—to Mars.

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Webb unlocks secrets of primeval galaxy

Looking deep into space and time, two teams using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old.

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Space tourists need better warnings about cosmic radiation exposure, say experts

Space weather experts at the University of Surrey are urging regulators and space tourism innovators to work together to protect their passengers and crews from the risks of space weather radiation exposure.

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What makes black holes grow and new stars form? Machine learning helps solve the mystery

When they are active, supermassive black holes play a crucial role in the way galaxies evolve. Until now, growth was thought to be triggered by the violent collision of two galaxies followed by their merger; however, new research led by the University of Bath suggests galaxy mergers alone are not enough to fuel a black hole—a reservoir of cold gas at the center the host galaxy is needed too.

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Astronomers discover new Saturn-sized exoplanet

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-1135 b is young, hot and comparable in size to Saturn. The discovery was detailed in a paper published February 27 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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NASA tests the new Starship docking system

The Apollo Program delivered 12 American astronauts to the surface of the moon. But that program ended in 1972, and since then, no human beings have visited. But Artemis will change that. And instead of just visiting the moon, Artemis' aim is to establish a longer-term presence on the moon. That requires more complexity than Apollo did. Astronauts will need to transfer between vehicles.

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Jupiter's moon Europa may have less oxygen than expected, a finding that might put a damper on life

New research suggests there's less oxygen on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa than thought—and that could affect what if any life might be lurking in the moon's underground ocean.

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Researchers reveal anomalous heating in the sun's upper atmosphere

In a study published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers from the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences depicted a complete physical image of the anomalous heating in the upper atmosphere of the sun (the solar corona and the solar chromosphere).

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Observations find evidence of patchy cloud layers in the atmosphere of a nearby planetary-mass object

Astronomers have performed multi-wavelength photometric observations of a nearby planetary-mass object known as SIMP J013656.5+093347. Results of the observational campaign, presented February 22 on the pre-print server arXiv, suggest that the object hosts patchy cloud layers in its atmosphere.

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Trends in nighttime fires in south/southeast Asian countries revealed by satellite

Krishna Vadrevu (ST11) served as the primary author, with Aditya Eaturu (UAH) as co-author, for the paper titled "Trends in Nighttime Fires in South/Southeast Asian Countries," published in the journal Atmosphere.

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Four new astronauts head to the International Space Station for a 6-month stay

Four astronauts headed to the International Space Station on Sunday where they will oversee the arrivals of two new rocketships during their half-year stint.

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What ended the 'dark ages' in the early universe? New Webb data just brought us closer to solving the mystery

About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the cosmos was a very dark place. The glow of the universe's explosive birth had cooled, and space was filled with dense gas —mostly hydrogen—with no sources of light.

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Where will you be for the April 8 total solar eclipse? There's still time to grab a spot

Where will you be watching the April 8 total solar eclipse? There are just a few weeks left to pick your spot to see the skies darken along a strip of North America, whether by land, sea or air.

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How will space transform the global food system?

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural production will need to increase by 60% by 2050 to meet the food demands of the growing global population.

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Hubble captures dense globular cluster NGC 1841

This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1841, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy that lies about 162,000 light-years away. Satellite galaxies are bound by gravity in orbits around a more massive host galaxy.

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First US moon lander in half a century stops working a week after tipping over at touchdown

The first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo astronauts fell silent Thursday, a week after breaking a leg at touchdown and tipping over near the lunar south pole.

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