aerospace industry, new discoveries, osiris-rex, space tech

Q&A With the Scientists Behind OSIRIS-REx’s ‘Eyes’

Using its multipurpose camera designed at the UA, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spied its target asteroid for the first time from about 1.4 million miles away. How did the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft take the first image of the target asteroid Bennu? UANews spoke with three OSIRIS-REx mission scientists who planned the first-light image of Bennu: Bashar Rizk, senior staff scientist ...

Troy Oakes

Cosmic Voids and Galaxy Clusters Challenge Theory of Relativity

It will be possible to use new astronomical mappings of hundreds of thousands of cosmic voids and galaxy clusters to test Einstein’s theory of relativity by looking for small deviations in gravity at vast distances — a possible explanation for the dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. This is shown in ...

Troy Oakes

Albert Einstein.

A Study Has Found Major Shifts in Global Freshwater

A new global, satellite-based study of Earth’s freshwater distribution found that wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas drier. The data suggest that this pattern is due to a variety of human and natural factors, including people’s use and management of water,  human-caused climate change, and natural climate cycles. A NASA-led research team that ...

Troy Oakes

Gaia Has Created the Richest Star Map of Our Galaxy and Beyond

A multitude of discoveries are on the horizon after a much-awaited release that is based on 22 months of charting the sky as part of Gaia’s mission to produce the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy ever created. The new data includes positions, distance indicators, and motions of more than 1 billion stars, along with ...

Troy Oakes

Kepler Spacecraft Running on Empty

Trailing Earth’s orbit at 94 million miles away, the Kepler space telescope has survived many potential knock-outs during its nine years in flight, from mechanical failures to being blasted by cosmic rays. At this rate, the hardy spacecraft may reach its finish line in a manner we will consider a wonderful success. With nary a ...

Troy Oakes

Kepler Spacecraft.

Astronauts May Soon Transform Human Waste Into Food

The day when astronauts go on deep-space missions, human waste may end up being a valuable food resource — that’s right, transform human waste into food. A team of researchers has shown that it is possible to rapidly break down solid and liquid waste to grow food. The idea is not new. Astronauts aboard the ...

Troy Oakes

human waste into food