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A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.
Posted: Aug 1st, 2013
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Using Cassini data, Cornell astronomers have determined that the amount of water vapor and ice erupting from Enceladus depends on tidal forces from Saturn - the same phenomenon that creates tides on Earth.
Posted: Jul 31st, 2013
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An advanced laser system offering vastly faster data speeds is now ready for linking with spacecraft beyond our planet following a series of crucial ground tests. Later this year, ESA's observatory in Spain will use the laser to communicate with a NASA Moon orbiter.
Posted: Jul 30th, 2013
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With the help of asteroseismic data obtained by the CoRoT space telescope, scientists were able to determine the interior rotation of a Sun-like star - and characterise an exoplanet.
Posted: Jul 30th, 2013
Read moreIn the science fiction show, Star Trek, teleportation is a regular and significant feature. But how much time and power is required to send the data needed to teleport a human being? University of Leicester physics students have calculated the answer to this very question.
Posted: Jul 30th, 2013
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For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
Posted: Jul 29th, 2013
Read moreUnderstanding complexity in the early universe may require combining simpler models to interpret cosmological observations.
Posted: Jul 26th, 2013
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Scientists can learn a tremendous amount about neutron stars and quark stars without understanding their internal structure in detail, according to two Montana State University scientists.
Posted: Jul 26th, 2013
Read moreThis spring, humanity was shown its most detailed map of the early universe ever created. Generated by observations from the Planck spacecraft, the map revealed fluctuations in temperature in the relic radiation left over from the Big Bang - what we call the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Recently, scientists on the Planck team announced finding certain large-scale features on the CMB sky that they cannot explain. One of them: a large cold spot, which corresponds to an anomalously large area of high density.
Posted: Jul 25th, 2013
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Using data from a NASA satellite, scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe and known as the Van Allen radiation belts.
Posted: Jul 25th, 2013
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NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft has captured its first observations of a region of the sun that is now possible to observe in detail: the lowest layers of the sun's atmosphere.
Posted: Jul 25th, 2013
Read moreBy directing energy beams at tiny crystals found in a Martian meteorite, a Western University-led team of geologists has proved that the most common group of meteorites from Mars is almost four billion years younger than many scientists had believed - resolving a long-standing puzzle in Martian science and painting a much clearer picture of the Red Planet's evolution that can now be compared to that of habitable Earth.
Posted: Jul 24th, 2013
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Astrophysicists have documented the immense power of quasar radiation, reaching out for many thousands of light years to the limits of the quasar's galaxy.
Posted: Jul 24th, 2013
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In the system NGC 253, astronomers observe outflows of matter curtailing the birth of stars.
Posted: Jul 24th, 2013
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Comets and meteorites contain clues to our solar system's earliest days. But some of the findings are puzzle pieces that don't seem to fit well together. A new set of theoretical models from Carnegie's Alan Boss shows how an outburst event in the Sun's formative years could explain some of this disparate evidence. His work could have implications for the hunt for habitable planets outside of our solar system.
Posted: Jul 24th, 2013
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Researchers at Brown University have shown that some Martian valleys appear to have been caused by runoff from orographic precipitation - moisture carried part of the way up a mountain and deposited on the slopes. The findings help to answer the question of whether water flowing on ancient Mars bubbled up from the ground or fell down from the atmosphere.
Posted: Jul 24th, 2013
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