What do shooting stars and astronaut safety have in common? Both stem from the sub-microscopic rock fragments found throughout the solar system, sometimes called interplanetary dust. When these particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere, they create meteors, better known as shooting stars, as the (usually) microscopic fragments vaporize and leave flaming trails through the air. When ...
Two satellites headed to Mars — dubbed “Blue” and “Gold” — led by the University of California, Berkeley, on an interplanetary mission to orbit around Mars. This program has been officially authorized to prepare for launch in October 2024. The announcement last week by NASA means that by 2026, the spacecraft will likely be exploring ...
The Amazon rainforest is in the northeast of South America and is a dense humid jungle, while the Sahara Desert is a mass of a nearly uninterrupted band of sand that lies on the northern part of Africa. When strong winds move across the Sahara, Saharan dust is what connects the two. A huge cloud of dust rises in ...
Can you see NASA’s newest rover in this picture from Jezero Crater? NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently completed its 11th flight at the Red Planet, snapping multiple photographs during its trip. Along with capturing the boulders, sand dunes, and rocky outcrops prevalent in the “South Séítah” region of Jezero Crater, a few of the images ...
A newly discovered visitor to the outer edges of our Solar System has been shown to be the largest comet ever, thanks to the rapid response telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory. The object, which is named Comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its two discoverers, was first announced on Saturday, June 19, 2021. C/2014 UN271 was ...
On June 7, 2021, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Ganymede than any spacecraft in more than two decades. Less than a day later, Juno made its 34th flyby of Jupiter, racing over its roiling atmosphere from pole to pole in less than three hours. Using the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager, the mission team has put ...
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team recently flight-certified all 24 of the detectors the mission needs. When NASA’s Roman Space Telescope launches in the mid-2020s, these devices will convert starlight into electrical signals, which will then be decoded into 300-megapixel images of large patches of the sky. These images will allow astronomers to explore ...
China has been at loggerheads with several nations over a number of issues, including handling of the pandemic, trade relations, territorial disputes over land and sea, and most recently space superiority. Pamela Melroy, a former NASA astronaut, is U.S. President Biden’s nominee for the post of NASA’s next deputy administrator and she is concerned about ...
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a rare look at a Jupiter-sized, still-forming planet that is feeding off material surrounding a young star. Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin said: “We just don’t know very much about how giant planets grow. This planetary system gives us the first opportunity to witness ...
In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned observatory at a brilliant “celebrity star,” one of the brightest stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas and dust. The price for the monster star’s opulence is “living on the edge.” The ...
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