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What Will the James Webb Space Telescope See? A Whole Bunch of Dust, That’s What
When it comes to the first galaxies, the James Webb Space Telescope will attempt to understand the formation of those galaxies and their link to the underlying dark matter. In case you didn’t know, most of the matter in our universe is invisible (a.k.a. “dark”), but its gravity binds everything together, including galaxies. So by …
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The First Molecule that was Possible in the Universe has been Seen in Space
It takes a rich and diverse set of complex molecules for things like stars, galaxies, planets and lifeforms like us to exist. But before humans and all the complex molecules we’re made of could exist, there had to be that first primordial molecule that started a long chain of chemical events that led to everything …
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The World’s Biggest Aircraft – the Rocket-Launching Stratolaunch – Completes its First Test Flight
Stratolaunch recently conducted the first test flight of its air-carrier plane, the largest and heaviest aircraft in the world.
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Methane-Filled Lakes on Titan are “Surprisingly Deep”
The Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons wrapped up in 2017, when the spacecraft was sent plunging into the gas giant to meet its end. But there’s still a lot of data from the mission to keep scientists busy. A team of scientists working with Cassini data have made a surprising discovery: Titan’s methane-filled …
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TESS Just Found its First Earth-Sized World
NASA’s new planet-hunting telescope, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), just found its first Earth-sized world. Though the Earth-sized planet, and its hot sub-Neptune companion, were first observed by TESS in January 2019, it’s taken until now to confirm their status with ground-based follow-up observations. The discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. When TESS …
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Astronomers Find a Chunk of a Comet Inside a Meteorite
The early days of the Solar System are hard to piece together from our vantage point, billions of years after it happened. Now a team of scientists have found a tiny chunk of an ancient comet inside an ancient meteorite. They say it sheds light on the early days of the Solar System when planets …
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Astro-Challenge: Spotting Slender Moons
Up for a challenge? Some of the toughest targets for a backyard observer involve little or no equipment at all. Northern hemisphere Spring brings with it one of our favorite astronomical pursuits: the first sighting of the extremely thin, waxing crescent Moon. This unique feat of visual athletics may be fairly straight forward... but it's tougher than you think. The angle of the evening ecliptic in the Spring is still fairly high for mid-northern latitudes, taking the Moon up and out of the weeds as a waxing crescent.
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SpaceX’s Starlink Constellation Construction Begins. 2,200 Satellites Will go up Over the Next 5 years
Musk recently announced that SpaceX will begin deploying the first batch of its internet satellites next year and continuing until 2024.
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Despite the Crash, SpaceIL is Going Back to the Moon with Beresheet 2
Beresheet, the unlikely lander built with donations to a non-profit group, crashed into the Moon. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a historic accomplishment in its own way. Now SpaceIL, the non-profit behind Beresheet, wants to send another lander to the Moon. The Beresheet lander crashed into the Moon last week, on its final descent. …
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Curiosity has Finally Sampled a Clay-Rich Region on Mars
It’s hard to believe that MSL Curiosity has been on Mars for almost seven years. But it has, and during that time, the rover has explored Gale Crater and Mt. Sharp, the central peak inside the crater. And while it has used its drill multiple times to take rock samples, this is the first sample …
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