A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) recently passed a rigorous technical and programmatic review. Now, the mission is transitioning into the final design-and-fabrication phase and establishing its technical, cost, and schedule baseline. The mission supports the objectives of ...
Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter’s upper troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere where the giant planet’s weather occurs and where its signature colorful striped clouds form. The work, conducted over four decades by stitching together data from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescope observations, found unexpected patterns in how temperatures of ...
Recent observations of a black hole devouring a wandering star may help scientists understand more complex black hole-feeding behaviors. Multiple NASA telescopes recently observed a massive black hole tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close. Located about 250 million light-years from Earth in the center of another galaxy, it was the fifth-closest example ...
Since NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft intentionally slammed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26 — altering its orbit by 33 minutes — the investigation team has been digging into the implications of how this planetary defense technique could be used in the future, if such a need should ever arise. This has included further analysis ...
When NASA’s Mars rovers found manganese oxides in rocks in the Gale and Endeavor craters in 2014, the discovery sparked speculation from scientists. Some scientists suggested that the red planet might have once had more oxygen in its atmosphere billions of years ago. The minerals probably required abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form, ...
Scientists analyzed new measurements showing that the light emitted by stars outside our galaxy is two to three times brighter than the light from known populations of galaxies, challenging assumptions about the number and environment of stars in the universe. Results of the study led by researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology have been posted to ...
When a star explodes (a supernova), it sends its intense burst of light out in all directions that have been captured in telescope images. However, on rare occasions, in the months and years that follow, rings of light or “light echoes” spread out from the original supernova position. This is described in a recent paper in Astrophysical Journal ...
Set for a November launch, the small satellite mission will use lasers to search for water ice inside the darkest craters at the Moon’s South Pole. It’s known that water ice exists below the lunar regolith (broken rock and dust), but scientists don’t yet understand whether surface ice frost covers the floors inside these cold ...
NASA’s Perseverance rover will establish the first sample depot on Mars. The next step in the unprecedented campaign to return scientifically selected samples from the planet was made on October 19 with a formal agreement between NASA and its partner ESA (European Space Agency). The two agencies will proceed with the creation of a sample ...
The observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) provides a different view of the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing young stars that have not yet cast off their dusty “cloaks.” This is not an ethereal landscape of time-forgotten tombs. Nor are these soot-tinged fingers reaching out. These pillars, flush with gas and dust, enshroud stars that are slowly ...
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