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Clarification of Voyager 1 Announcement
With a topic as complex as space exploration, confusion sometimes follows. Such has been the case with findings from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. As the spacecraft edges further and further out into space, what it encounters is interpreted through the media as being “the edge of the solar system.” However, one NASA official pointed out that […] More
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A View of Mercury From Afar
This image of Mercury, acquired by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) aboard NASA’s MESSENGER mission on April 23, 2013, allows us to take a step back to view the planet. Prior to the MESSENGER mission, Mercury’s surface was often compared to the surface of Earth’s moon, when in fact, Mercury and the moon are […] More
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‘Mr. O’ (NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) Makes Remarkable New Discoveries From Mars Orbit
Much talk of Mars these days seems to focus almost exclusively upon the multi-faceted Curiosity rover, as it unravels the mysterious geological past of Gale Crater, or upon the Opportunity rover, which has endured 37 times longer than intended in one of the harshest environments ever encountered and last month broke the record for the […] More
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Where Are the Best Windows Into Europa’s Interior?
The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa exposes material churned up from inside the moon and also material resulting from matter and energy coming from above. If you want to learn about the deep saltwater ocean beneath this unusual world’s icy shell—as many people do who are interested in possible extraterrestrial life—you might target your investigation […] More
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Blame it on the Rain (from Saturn’s Rings)
A new study tracks the “rain” of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought. The study, whose observations were funded by NASA and whose analysis was led by the University of Leicester, England, reveals that […] More
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Strange New Worlds: Exoplanets Abound in the Cosmos (Part 2)
Astronomers have been dazzled by the sheer number of planets there seem to be in the galaxy. According to a recent estimate, there’s on average at least one planet orbiting every star, which comes out to around 400 billion exoplanets in the Milky Way as a whole. This is probably a conservative number, and it […] More
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Planets, Planets Everywhere: Exoplanets Abound in the Cosmos
It has been only about 20 years since the first planets were found outside our solar system. Today, almost a thousand exoplanets have been confirmed, and the rate of discovery is going up all the time. A big reason for this explosion of discoveries is NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which, since 2009, has been gazing […] More
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How Long Do The Voyager Spacecraft Have Left?
When will we lose contact with NASA’s Voyager spacecraft? Just to clarify the question, the problem won’t be about our hearing them, but about the spacecraft ceasing to transmit once they run out of electrical power. The two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977—Voyager 2 on August 20 and Voyager 1 on September 5. The trajectories and […] More
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Trick Shot: Cassini Spies Venus Through Saturn’s Rings
Despite the fact that it is orbiting one of the arguably most beautiful planets in our solar system, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, orbiting the planet Saturn, opted to snap pics of another, and more hellish, world. Cassini’s target was Earth’s “twin,” the planet Venus. Its highly-reflective clouds peek through Saturn’s rings in the image above. More
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NASA’s Hubble Reveals Rogue Planetary Orbit for Fomalhaut B
WASHINGTON — Newly released NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut and a mysterious planet circling it may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system. More
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Some Exoplanets May be Even More Habitable Than Earth
In the search for life elsewhere, the Earth is typically used as a standard against which other planets, or moons, are compared. Since our planet is teeming with seemingly countless life forms, it must represent the near-perfect, most ideal conditions for life to flourish, right? It would seem so, but new research is suggesting that […] More
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New Super Earth Found 22 Light Years Away Could Support Life
Using public data from the European Space Observatory and measurements from the Keck Observatory’s High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope, an international team of researchers has discovered a new potentially habitable super Earth located in the ‘goldilocks zone’ relative to it’s star. More