NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Ends 11-Year Mission
NASA has concluded that the 11-year mission of the Dawn Spacecraft and its exploration of Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has come to an end. According to the space agency, the spacecraft missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network not only on […]
Bees Take a Break During Total Solar Eclipse
On August 21st, 2017 a total solar eclipse traveled a north-west to south-east path across the United States. Some even called the event the “Great American Eclipse”. A number of researchers from various scientific disciplines used the occasion to conduct experiments. Researchers at the University of Missouri, led by Candace Galen, Ph.D., a professor of […]
Study: Pluto Should Be a Planet!
In 2006, members of the International Astronomical Union or the IAU, an organization recognized as the authority for naming celestial bodies, voted on a set of characteristics that define what makes a planet a planet. One of those traits required a planet had to “clear” its orbit; meaning it had to provide the greatest gravitational force in […]
Iron and Titanium Found in Atmosphere of Ultra-hot Exoplanet
The chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere is said to contain about 78% Nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with argon, carbon dioxide, and other gases making up the remaining 1%. But an international team of scientists says they have detected vapors of iron and titanium in the atmosphere of what is considered to be the hottest “ultra-hot” […]
Astronomers Find and Confirm 44 New Extrasolar Planets
An international team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of 44 new extrasolar planets. The planets were first spotted by the astronomers through data gathered from Campaign #10 of NASA’s Kepler K2 mission. According to NASA’s Kepler and K2 webpage, campaign #10 ran from July 6, 2016, to September 20, 2016. To verify their findings, […]
Lowest Frequency Fast Radio Burst Detected
Fast radio bursts or FRB’s are brilliant, powerful but quick pulses of electromagnetic energy at radio wavelengths. Scientists think these rare and mysterious radio pulses, which are said to last no more than 5 milliseconds, travel across the universe from sources billions of light-years away. In a posting to the Astronomer’s Telegram website, scientists working […]
Space and Earth Weather Align to Make a Bad Situation Worse
A new study suggests that an unfortunate confluence of space weather and Earth weather events in early September 2017, may have made a bad situation worse in the wake of devastation left by a line of hurricanes in the Caribbean. As three tropical storms, including the category 5 hurricane Irma, were making their way across a […]
Mars In The News
Two new studies about Mars made news this week. Liquid Water Lake Detected on Mars First, a group of Italian scientists announced that they detected a 20-kilometer-wide lake of liquid water located about 1.5 kilometers beneath the ice of the southern polar ice cap of Mars. The scientists analyzed more than three years of data […]
Astronomers Discover A Dozen New Jovian Moons
As a team of astronomers was looking beyond Pluto for the mysterious Planet 9. So far they haven’t located the giant hypothetical planet, but they did wind up discovering a dozen new moons orbiting Jupiter. “Jupiter just happened to be in the sky near the search fields where we were looking for extremely distant Solar System […]
Scientists: It’s New Era In Space Research
Members of the science community are proclaiming a new era in space research after discovering the first verified source of a super-energetic subatomic particle called a high-energy neutrino. Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University say that these neutrinos contain energies that are thousands to millions of times greater than those generated by particle colliders/accelerators such […]