Space & Astronomy News

An artist’s concept of a “Hot Jupiter” extrasolar planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar disk. My colleagues and I have used computer simulations to show that newborn gas planets in these disks are …

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a relatively close star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Fedriani, J. Tan This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is teeming with color and activity. It features a relatively close star-forming region known as IRAS …

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:05 a.m. EST on Feb. 15, 2024. As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Intuitive Machines’ first lunar mission …

The New Shepard crew capsule descends under parachutes during its launch Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. Credit: Blue Origin Researchers are studying data from a recent suborbital flight test to better understand lunar regolith, or moon dust, and its potentially damaging effects as NASA prepares to send astronauts back to the …

A Synthetic Aperture Radar image of the Moon’s Tycho Crater, showing 5-meter resolution detail. Credit: Raytheon Technologies. How can humans protect the Earth from “devastating asteroid and comet impacts?” According to the National Academies and their 2023-2032 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, ground-based astronomical radar systems will have a …

This photo provided by NASA on Jan. 22, 2024 shows a view of eight sample trays containing the final material from asteroid Bennu. NASA reported Thursday, Feb. 15, that the Osiris-Rex spacecraft collected 121.6 grams (4.3 ounces) of dust and pebbles from asteroid Bennu. That’s about a cupful — the …

Artist’s concept of a magnetar. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are strange events. They can last only milliseconds, but during that time can outshine a galaxy. Some FRBs are repeaters, meaning that they can occur more than once from the same location, while others seem to occur just once. …

A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity deep within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake (artistic illustration). Located in the Kuiper Belt, a vast donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune at the edge of the solar system, Eris …

A new paper proposes an experimental setup that could test the classic Daisyworld model — a hypothesis of a self-regulating planetary ecosystem — in the lab via two synthetic bacterial strains. Credit: Victor Maull, created with Image Designer According to the Gaia hypothesis, which was proposed by the scientists Lovelock …

A sample of fabric burns inside an uncrewed Cygnus cargo craft during a previous Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiment investigation, Saffire-IV. Credit: NASA NASA recently concluded the final mission of its Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiment, or Saffire, putting a blazing end to an eight-year series of investigations that provided insights into …