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 […]
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, […]
Building Blocks of Life Discovered on Saturn Moon – Enceladus
NASA’s Cassini mission, which provided a close look of Saturn, its moons, and famous rings came to a blazing end on September 15, 2017. But the data gathered by the 13-year mission continues to provide scientists with new insight into the ringed planet. One of the highlights of the Cassini mission was its discovery of geysers […]
Curiosity Finds a Couple of Life’s Building Blocks on Mars
NASA says their Mars roaming laboratory, Curiosity, has found fresh evidence near the surface of the Red Planet that suggests it could have once supported ancient life. The rover also found evidence, in the Martian Atmosphere, that could link into the space agency’s search for current life on the planet. According to NASA, the new […]
NASA Plans to Fly Helicopter on Mars
There are two robotic rovers traversing and exploring the surface of Mars – NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. These rovers, along with two others (Sojourner & Spirit) from past missions, use(d) specially made wheels to get around the Red Planet. Instead of just wheels NASA now wants to try a different way to travel around Mars. […]
How Will Our Sun Die?
Scientists say our Sun has been shining for about the last 4.6 billion years. They also say the Sun is expected to have enough hydrogen to fuel nuclear fusion in its core to allow it to continue shining as it has for about another 5 billion years. Along with creating solar energy, the Sun’s hydrogen […]
Calculations Show Mercury Has a Thin but Dense Crust
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and very little is really known about this hot rocky orb. So far, only two space probes have ever studied Mercury. NASA’s Mariner 10 flew past the planet three times between 1973 and 1974. The flybys allowed scientists to map about half the planet, discover its thin […]
NASA Launches TESS the Exoplanet Hunter
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will soon join NASA’s fleet of exoplanet-hunters that, so far, includes the Kepler, Hubble, and the Spitzer Space Telescopes. TESS was launched at 2251 UTC on April 18, 2018, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The space observatory is expected to survey about 85% of […]
Could a Net and a Harpoon Cleanup Space Junk?
The Chinese space station Tiangong 1’s recent fall to Earth, in an unguided re-entry, has raised discussion again on how to address the nagging problem of space junk or orbital debris circling our planet. The website for NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office indicates that more than 21,000 orbital debris, larger than 10 cm, are known […]
Life May Exist Among the Clouds of Venus
The search for extraterrestrial life has included examining the possibilities within and outside of the solar system. It has been thought that Mars and a couple of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter may hold the chance of having ET life. It’s also thought by some that a number of Earthlike extrasolar or exoplanets residing […]