Science

At a recent national space conference, scientists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences shared the objectives for the planned International Lunar Research Station. The post China Hints at Its Goals for a Lunar Base appeared first on Universe Today ....

A couple times a year, the Hubble Space Telescope turns its powerful gaze on the giant planets in the outer Solar System, studying their cloudtops and weather systems. With the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) Program, Hubble provides us with these ...

In December 2020, JAXA's Hayabusa2 spacecraft delivered a pristine sample of otherworldly dust and rock from asteroid Ryugu to Earth. Scientists have since had the opportunity to study the sample, and announced last week that the asteroid contains org...

Building with Legos is a favored pastime for many small children and adults. We've even covered some more space-oriented Lego sets here at UT. But, as the Lego movie points out, they constitute "a highly sophisticated interlocking brick system....

When the Artemis astronauts and future explorers go to the Moon and Mars, they'll need power. Lots of it. Of course, they'll use solar panels to generate the juice they need for habitats, experiments, rovers, and so on. But, they'll need batte...

The Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars (AM IX) just released its official report. Here are some of the biggest takeaways. The post The 9th Annual Achieving Mars Workshop Report has been Released! How...

This past week was a mixed bag for Relativity Space and their 3D-printed methane-fueled rocket engine. While the company's Terran 1 rocket blasted off successfully on Wednesday, March 22, the second stage failed to ignite a few minutes after launch. T...

Scientists have found what appear to be rogue planets hidden in old survey data. Their results are starting to define the poorly-understood rogue planet population. In the near future, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a search for more f...

A new study shows how hypervelocity stars could teach us more about the most powerful and mysterious phenomena in the Universe. The post Hypervelocity Stars Teach us About Black Holes and Supernovae appeared first on Universe Today ....

1800 light-years away, an unlikely survivor orbits an aged star. This rare planet is called a hot Neptune, and it's one of only a small handful of hot Neptunes astronomers have found. Hot Neptunes are so close to their stars that the overpowering stel...

There's a reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for the Perseverance Rover: it is considered one of the likeliest places to find any evidence if Mars was ever habitable for long periods of time. In this great new flyby video from ESA, yo...

Life on Earth has been around for a long time—at least 3.8 billion years. During that time, it evolved significantly. Why has biodiversity here changed so much? A new study proposes a startling idea. Some major diversity changes are linked to supern...

The TOLIMAN space telescope will search for exoplanets next door, and has contracted with EnduroSat to make that happen. The post A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri appeared first on Universe Today ....

Our galaxy is still actively making stars. We've known that for a while, but sometimes it's hard to understand the true scale in astronomical terms. A team from Japan is trying to help with that by using a novel machine-learning technique to ident...

The highly-anticipated Dragonfly robotic rotocraft mission to Saturn's moon Titan is scheduled to launch in 2027. When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will hover and zoom around in the thick atmosphere of Titan, sampling the air and imaging the landsc...

One of the most interesting questions we can ask is, "How did life form?". To answer it, scientists go back to look at the basic chemical building blocks of life. Those are water, carbon-based organic molecules, silicates, and others. The James We...

The moons of our Solar System have garnered quite a lot of attention in the last few years, especially pertaining to astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth. From the Galilean moons of Jupiter to the geysers of Enceladus to the methane lakes on ...

New results presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference could change our approach to Mars exploration. Scientists studying the surface of Mars discovered a relict glacier near the planet's equator. The relict glacier could signal the ...

According to a new study, the exoplanet 40 Eridani b (aka. "Vulcan") was a false positive. Bad news for Star Trek fans, but possibly good for future exoplanet surveys. The post Sci-Fi Christmas is Ruined! Planet Vulcan Doesn't Exist appeared f...

Where on the Moon will the first crewed Artemis mission Land? While NASA is still deliberating on the exact location, they've chosen several candidate landing sites near the lunar south pole. This new image captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter...

We've come a long way since gamma rays were discovered. The late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of great scientific advancements. Scientists were just getting a handle on the different types of radiation. Radium featured prominently in the experime...

Creating rocky planets is a messy, dangerous, hot business. Planetesimals accrete together, which creates heat and pressure on the newborn world. The nearby adolescent star bombards them with intense radiation. That likely "bakes off" any surface ...

Interest in the exploration of Venus has kicked up a notch lately, especially after a contested recent discovery of phosphine, a potential biosignature, in the planet's atmosphere. Plenty of missions to Venus have been proposed, and NASA and ESA have ...

The ExoMars Rover mission is back on track for its mission to Mars, but Russia won't be a part of it this time. Following Russia's disastrous invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022, the ESA suspended the ExoMars program. Now, the missio...

This summer, the first all-electric thruster will be tested in orbit. This technology could revolutionize commercial space as know it! The post The First All-Electrical Thruster the IVO Quantum Drive is Headed to Space! appeared first on Universe Today ....

In some of the best footage yet, the Perseverance rover has taken new video of the Ingenuity helicopter taking off and flying over Mars' surface. This video shows the dust initially kicked up by the helicopter's spinning rotors, as well as Ingenui...

Using archival radar images taken in the 1990s by NASA's Magellan spacecraft, scientists have found evidence of recent active volcanism on Venus. The images revealed a volcanic vent that changed shape and increased significantly in size over an eight-...

Asteroid Didymos is spitting rocks out into space. Last fall, when NASA's DART mission impacted Didymos' moon Dimorphos in a dramatic (and successful) attempt to change the object's orbit, DART got a quick look at the Didymos system before the...

Think there's nothing to learn through suborbital flight and that space science is only done in orbit? Think again. Recently, a group of school students in Canada asked the question: do Epi-Pens work in space? These are epinephrine-loaded injectors us...

Massive stars are sprinters. It might seem counterintuitive that stars 100 or 200 times more massive than our Sun could only survive for as few as 10 million years. Especially since smaller stars like our Sun can last 10 billion years. Massive stars have ...

NASA and Axiom Space Inc. provided a first, limited look at the new spacesuits that will be worn by the next astronauts to land on the Moon. The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that will be worn for the Artemis missions was only parti...

A newly discovered asteroid called 2023 DW has generated quite a buzz over the past week, due to an estimated 1-in-670 chance of impact on Valentine's Day 2046. But despite a NASA advisory and the resulting scary headlines, there's no need to put ...

An international team of astronomers discovered a "fossil galaxy" that consume its neighbors, the farthest observed to date! The post A Distant Galaxy Ate All of its Friends. Now It's All Alone appeared first on Universe Today ....

The picture of the Moon in the banner might not look all that spectacular, but it is absolutely astounding from a technical perspective. What makes it so unique is that it was taken via a telescope using a completely flat lens. This type of lens, called a...

A new study looks at what it takes to survive beyond Earth, raising serious questions about whether or not human migrations to space is "Inevitable."; The post A Human Migration to Space is NOT so Inevitable, says New Research appeared first on Uni...

A world-famous 17th-century astronomer credited with discovering Saturn's moon Titan may have needed glasses, according to a recent paper in the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. In an era when telescope technology was less than a centu...

The official verdict on Artemis 1. Canadian kids discovered something NASA didn't know. Was there a Dark Big Bang? The next bright comet for 2024. SLS Good For Humans. Artemis 2 in 2024 NASA released the results of the analysis of the Artemis 1 missio...

The origins of Earth's water is a complicated mystery that scientists have been untangling for decades. Life is impossible without water, so the origin of Earth's life-giving water is a foundational question. As the power of our telescopes grows, ...

Seen from space, regions of Mars around the south pole have a bizarre, pitted "Swiss cheese" appearance. These formations come from alternating massive deposits of CO2 ice and water ice, similar to different layers of a cake. For decades, planetar...

One of the last times we did an article about a technology that could remove lunar dust from clothing, we opened it with a famous meme line from Star Wars. That also means we should probably avoid subjecting everyone to it again here. Still, the fact that...

Artemis astronauts are returning to the Moon, and they'll be following in Apollo's footsteps when they go. But things are different this time. Not only is technology far more advanced, but so is the way we think about technology and how we design ...

China just showed off the massive storage tank that will be part of the super-heavy launch vehicle, the Long March 9. The post Look out, Starship! China is Building a Massive Reusable Rocket! appeared first on Universe Today ....

When faced with a potentially mission-ending problem with NASA's 15-year-old Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, engineers performed a time-honored procedure to fix it: they turned it off and then turned it back on again. Success! IBEX i...

Every once in a while, the stars (or, in this case, satellites) align, and keen observers can receive an unexpected light show. That happened a few weeks ago at the Subaru telescope in Hawai'i. An eerie green laser seemingly appeared out of nowhere, a...

What are the hydrocarbon seas on Titan really like? While the upcoming Dragonfly helicopter mission to Saturn's hazy and frigid moon should arrive by 2034 to explore Titan's atmosphere, the need remains for a mission that could study the moon'...

When the first people set foot on the Moon for long-term projects, they'll need a lot of things, including their own time zone. That makes sense since they'll be on an entirely different world. And, they'll depend on a whole new set of technol...

NASA's Curiosity Rover usually looks down at the ground, studying nearby rocks and craters. But sometimes, it looks up and sees something wonderful. A new image released by Curiosity shows beautiful sun rays, called crepuscular rays, streaming through...

The ongoing effort to under Martian geology and the planet's history continues. A recent paper from a scientific team in China looks at the data collected by Zhurong, a rover that has been in place on the Red Planet since 2021. While it didn't fin...

New Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS may put on a show at the end of next year. The post 2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS: a Bright Comet for the End of 2024? appeared first on Universe Today ....

Can low-mass stars play host to giant, Jupiter-sized planets? Theories of planet formation suggest that it's highly unlikely. But a team of scientists in the UK found that it's possible, though rare. The most widely-held theory of planet formation...