Moscow delivered a double whammy of bad news to US space programs today by banning the use of Russian made rocket engines for US military national security launches and by declining to prolong cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS) – says Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of space and […]...
Researchers have identified the first “sibling” of the Sun — a star that was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star. ...
The APEX Telescope has revealed an unprecedented number of cold dense clumps of gas and dust as the cradles of massive stars. ...
After one turn around the sun, it’s time for Chris Hadfield’s ultimate space music video to go to that great graveyard in the sky. The astronaut tweeted earlier today (May 13) that singer David Bowie gave permission for Hadfield’s “Space Oddity” to be online for a year, and that the video is coming down today. […]...
It’s time to come home! Expedition 39 astronauts Rick Mastracchio, Koichi Wakata and Mikhail Tyurin will climb into a Russian Soyuz spacecraft later today to make the trip back to Earth from the International Space Station. Much of the activity will play out on NASA TV, which you can watch above. Below are details about […]...
“One of the main things we’re focused on is the notion of existential risk, getting a sense of what the probability of human extinction is,” said Andrew Snyder-Beattie, who recently wrote a piece on the “Great Filter” for Ars Technica. As Snyder-Beattie explained in the article, the “Great Filter” is a response to the question of […]...
One of our favorite timelapse artists, Gavin Heffernan from Sunchaser Pictures recently was invited to Northern Arizona University as an artist in residence to speak with their photography students about his timelapse experiences. While there, he also took shooting field trips to some of the magnificent locations a few hours away, most notably Grand Canyon […]...
They’re nearby, they’re common and — at least in the latest exoplanet newsflashes hot off the cyber-press — they’re hot. We’re talking about red dwarf stars, those “salt of the galaxy” stars that litter the Milky Way. And while it’s true that there are more of “them” than there are of “us,” not a single […]...
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Tim Reyes, a former NASA software engineer and analyst who has supported development of orbital and lander missions to the planet Mars since 1992. The International Sun-Earth Explorer spacecraft (ISEE-3) is phoning home and will be returning whether we are ready or not. Launched in 1978 to […]...
Almost every historic American launch occurred at one place in Cape Canaveral: Launch Complex 39. Good old LC39 was build for the Apollo spacecraft, and then modified for the Space Shuttle program. And now it’s carrying on this tradition for upcoming SpaceX rockets. Let’s explore the history of this instrumental launch facility. (...)Read the rest […]...
It’s a key piece of the climate change puzzle. For years, researchers have been eyeing the stability of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet as global temperatures rise. Melting of the ice sheet could have dire consequences for sea level rise.(...)Read the rest of NASA West Antarctic Ice Sheet Findings: Glacier Loss Appears Unstoppable (1,147 words) […]...
Astronomers recently found stars at the centers of old star clusters rotating around a common axis rather in random orbits, as once thought. ...
Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of French astrophysicists have for the first time explained a long standing mystery: why surges of star formation (so called ‘starbursts’) take place when galaxies collide. ...
Peer about 110 light-years away from our solar system, and you might catch a glimpse of how our own neighborhood came together. The recent discovery that HD 162826 — a star bright enough to be seen in binoculars — could be a “sibling” of our sun could shed more light on the solar system’s formation, astronomers […]...
Here’s a finding to give planetary protectionists pause: two species of spores mounted on the International Space Station’s hull a few years back showed a high survival rate after 18 months in space. Providing that they are shielded against solar radiation, it appears the spores are quite hardy and could easily transport on a spacecraft […]...
Zoom! A star was recently spotted speeding at 1.4 million miles an hour (2.2 million km/hr), which happened to be the closest and second-brightest of the so-called “hypervelocity” stars found so far. Now that about 20 of these objects have been found, however, astronomers are now trying to use the stars beyond classifying them. One of those […]...
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Gadi Eidelheit at his The Venus Transit blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #353. (...)Read the rest of Carnival of Space #353 (91 words) susie for Universe Today, 2014. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Carnival of Space Feed enhanced by Better […]...
Funny thing. Skywatchers are often just as excited to watch a celestial object disappear as we are to see it make an appearance. Early Wednesday morning (May 14) the Full Flower Moon will slip in front of Saturn, covering it from view for about an hour for observers in Australia and New Zealand. If you don’t live where […]...
Astronomers have identified the first "sibling" of the Sun -- a star that was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star. The newly developed methods for locating the Sun's 'siblings' will help other astronomers find other "solar siblings," work that could lead to an understanding of how and where our Sun formed, and how our solar system became hospitable for life. ...
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Boeing expects to launch the first unmanned test flight of their commercial CST-100 manned ‘space taxi’ in “early 2017,” said Chris Ferguson, commander of NASA’s final shuttle flight in an exclusive one-on-one interview with Universe Today for an inside look at Boeing’s space efforts. Ferguson is now spearheading Boeing’s human […]...