A full moon, known as the "Strawberry Moon" is shown split in half, June 15, 2022. Credit: REUTERS/JOE SKIPPER The brand-new project entails putting three guardian satellites carrying loads of fuel and kinetic weapons into the moon's orbit around the Earth. China's "Planetary Defense System" has been capturing momentum recently, with Beijing researchers now planning to...
ispace’s Series 2 lunar lander. Credit: ispace The technician team working from lunar exploration start-up ispace has unveiled its coming generation lunar lander, in time for its third lunar mission. According to Series 2, the lander is at the moment anticipated to launch in 2024 and is greater in size and haul storage capacity than the...
This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, shows wide (left) and close-up (right) views of the moon-forming disc surrounding PDS 70c, a young Jupiter-like planet nearly 400 light-years away. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al. New high-resolution observations reveal a Moon-forming area around exoplanet PDS 70c. The...
A pair of scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has published a viewpoint piece in the journal Science describing the efforts conducted this decade to learn if Mars once hosted life. In their post, Ryuki Hyodo and also Tomohiro Usui describe the three main initiatives that are involved in trying to find...
Dogged monitoring assisted researchers in sniffing out a far better understanding of the space rock. The image shows the asteroid Kleopatra and its two small moons, AlexHelios and CleoSelene, based on data gathered in July 2017. Credit: ESO/Vernazza, Marchis et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS) New monitorings of an asteroid shaped like a dog bone and its two tiny...
Credit: pixabay The planet Jupiter has no solid ground—no surface, like the grass or dirt we walk on here on Earth. There’s nowhere to land or walk on. But how is that possible? If Jupiter has no surface, then what does it have? How does it hold together? Even for a physics professor who studies unusual phenomena,...
Interacting galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163, in a composite image combining Hubble and JWST data. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI) Abyss Gazing Back: Nietzsche's Prophetic Words in Space "The abyss also looks back into you," said German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in 1886. His words feel almost prophetic as we gaze, nearly 140 years later, at an image from 80 million...
Astronomers have listened in on the TRAPPIST-1 system in case aliens are beaming radio signals between neighboring planetsZayna Sheikh If extraterrestrials are observing Earth, they could potentially pick up on the radio signals we send to Mars to operate our rovers. Astronomers have begun monitoring the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system to see if aliens are communicating...
Super Heavy just before captureSpaceX In an impressive display of space engineering, SpaceX achieved a groundbreaking milestone. At around 7:31 am CT, they successfully captured a Super Heavy booster using their launch tower after it deployed a Starship second stage into orbit and performed a controlled reentry. After following space launches since the Mercury missions, I...
Rendering of what a watery Mars may have looked likeNASA Data gathered by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars is revealing new information about how the Red Planet became uninhabitable in the distant past, attributed to a changing climate that led to the evaporation of surface water or its entrapment as ice. Not too long ago, the...
