Asteroid 16 Psyche, often sensationally dubbed the 10,000 quadrillion dollar asteroid due to its composition of valuable metals, may not be entirely what it seems.  A new paper out of the University of Arizona suggests that the asteroid is possibly more porous, and less metallic, than previous studies indicated. It still certainly has a mostly …

Continue reading "Asteroid 16 Psyche Might Not be a Solid Chunk of Metal After All, but Another Rubble Pile"

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Given all of the news surrounding the landing and first few months of operation of the Perseverance rover on Mars, it might be surprising that its actual science mission hasn't even started yet.  That changed on June 1st when the rover officially kicked off its first science mission by leaving its landing site. UT has …

Continue reading "It’s Time for Perseverance to get to Work"

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Scientists seem to have come up with a new parlor game – how many ways can we potentially detect exoplanets?  The two most common methods, the transit method and the Doppler method, each have their own problems.  Alternative methods are starting to sprout up, and a new one was recently proposed by Jacob Nibauer, an …

Continue reading "What’s the Connection Between the Chemistry of a Star and the Formation of its Planets?"

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Author’s note – this article was written with Dr. Vincent Kofman, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and the lead author on the research it discusses. Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered in the recent decades. Planet hunters like TESS and Kepler, as well as numerous ground-based efforts, have pushed the field …

Continue reading "How To Search the Chemical Makeup of Exoplanet Atmospheres for Hints at Their History"

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Relativity Space, a recent to the commercial space sector, is primed to become one of SpaceX and Blue Origin's toughest competitors!

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It's an exciting time to be a Venus watcher.  Our sister planet, which has been the target of only one mission since the 1980s, is now the focus of not one, not two, but three missions from NASA and ESA.  Combined, they promise to give the closest look ever at the Morning Star, and some …

Continue reading "ESA is Joining NASA With Their own Mission to Venus"

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Exploration of ocean worlds has become a hot topic of late, primarily due to their role as a potential harbor for alien life.  Moons that have confirmed subsurface oceans garner much of the attention, such as Enceladus and Europa.  But they may not be the only ones.  Uranus' larger moons – Miranda, Ariel, and Umbriel …

Continue reading "What Mission Could Detect Oceans at Uranus’ Moons?"

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Using isotope measurements of a supernova remnant, astronomers have calculated the core density of a white dwarf before it exploded.

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