Mapping the interior of the ice giants is difficult, to say the least. Not only are they far away and therefore harder to observe, but their constant ice cover makes it extremely hard to detect what lies underneath. So scientists must devise more ingenious ways to see what’s inside them. A team from the University …

Continue reading "The Rings of Uranus and Neptune Could Help map Their Interiors"

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When NASA sent the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to the red planet in 2006, the spacecraft took an instrument with it called CRISM—Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. CRISM’s job is to produce maps of Mars’ surface mineralogy. It’s been an enormous success, but unfortunately, the loss of its last cryocooler in 2017 means the …

Continue reading "A New Map of Mars, Made From 51,000 Orbital Images"

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Northrup Grumman's Cygnus cargo spacecraft conducted a successful reboost of the International Space Station over the past weekend, on Saturday, June 25, 2022. The Cygnus NG-17 “Piers Sellers” is the first US-based spacecraft to provide a substantial orbital adjustment to the ISS since the space shuttles retired in 2011. Russia's Progress cargo spacecraft has been …

Continue reading "Cygnus Boosts the International Space Station for the First Time. NASA Can Now Potentially Keep the Station Aloft Without Russia’s Progress Spacecraft"

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A galactic nova flared briefly into naked eye visibility for a day, before vanishing from sight.

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Astronomers using the ALMA Observatory have discovered an unusual, massive star near the center of our galaxy, a star that has two spiral arms. The arms are part of an accretion disk, a broad disk of dust and gas surrounding the protostar. While this is not the first star to be seen with such rare …

Continue reading "A Star has Grown Spiral Arms"

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We are carbon-based life forms. That means the basis for the chemical compounds that forms our life is the element carbon. It’s crucial because it bonds with other elements such as hydrogen and oxygen to create the complex molecules that are part of life. So, when we look for evidence of life elsewhere in the …

Continue reading "Curiosity Finds Life-Crucial Carbon in Mars Rocks"

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A microwave oven–sized cubesat launched to space today from New Zealand by commercial company Rocket Lab and their Electron rocket. The small satellite will conduct tests to make sure the unique lunar orbit for NASA's future Lunar Gateway is actually stable.   The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, mission …

Continue reading "Rocket Lab Launches NASA’s CAPSTONE Mission to the Moon"

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Earth’s oceans are one huge, uniform electrolyte solution. They contain salt (sodium chloride) and other nutrients like magnesium, sulphate, and calcium. We can’t survive without electrolytes, and life on Earth might look very different without the oceans’ electrolyte content. It might even be non-existent. On Earth, electrolytes are released into the oceans from rock by …

Continue reading "Water Worlds Could Have Plumes of Nutrients Carried up From Down Below"

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