TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China announced plans on Wednesday to send a new telescope to probe deep into the universe as it prepared to launch the country’s next, three-member crew for its orbiting space station. The telescope, dubbed Xuntian, will be installed by China’s Tiangong space station and will co-orbit with it, according to a …
British astronauts could get the chance to blast into the cosmos thanks to a new deal between the UK and a US space company. The UK Space Agency has signed an agreement with Axiom Space, a Texas-based firm working on what it says will become the first-ever commercial space station. It has previously sent crewed …
Astronauts Set for First all-UK Space Mission after Deal which could ‘Inspire Millions’ Read More »
Astronomers have spotted the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) to date in a galaxy so far away that its light took eight billion years to reach Earth. The remote blast of cosmic radio waves, whose source was detected by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), lasted less than a millisecond. It …
Those of us who have ever used a magnifying glass to start stuff on fire, rejoice — it ends up we were doing the same kind of science that could build roads, launch pads, and more on the Moon. A paper published in Scientific Reports outlines an audacious way to melt the lunar surface into …
Light — and a Big Lens — Could Build Roads on the Moon Read More »
Space agencies have performed a dazzling aerial feat at both Venus and Mars: they’ve dipped an incoming spacecraft into the planets’ atmospheres to slow it down without wasting precious rocket fuel. But will this audacious aerocapture technique also work in the outer solar system? Athul Pradeepkumar Girija, who recently earned a PhD from Purdue University …
Aerocapture: Using a Planet’s Atmosphere to Slow Down a Spacecraft Read More »
Ancient semi-fossilized tree rings may hold the clues to the largest solar flare event ever known, which occurred some 14,000 years ago, according to researchers. The researchers investigated “subfossils,” which are particle fossilized biological material, from a forest in the Southern French Alps. They sliced the tree samples into hundreds of single tree-rings and analyzed …
Prehistoric Trees Tint an Immense Solar Storm hit Earth 14,300 years ago Read More »
Even on a sunny day, human eyes can’t see all the light our nearest star gives off. A new image displays some of this hidden light, including the high-energy X-rays emitted by the hottest material in the Sun’s atmosphere, as observed by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). While the observatory typically studies objects outside …
NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun Read More »
The youngest stars often shine in bright bursts as they consume material from surrounding disks. Newborn stars “feed” at a furious rate and grow through surprisingly frequent feeding frenzies, a recent analysis of data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope shows. Outbursts from stellar babies at the earliest stage of development – when they’re about …
Baby Star ‘Burps’ Tell Tales of Frantic Feeding, NASA Data Shows Read More »
Recent observations of a black hole devouring a wandering star may help scientists understand more complex black hole feeding behaviors. Multiple NASA telescopes recently observed a massive black hole tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close. Located about 250 million light-years from Earth in the center of another galaxy, it was the …
NASA Gets Unusually Close Glimpse of Black Hole Snacking on Star Read More »
