Space Exploration

A Rare, Ultra-Bright Star Has Disappeared Without a Trace Stars can do a lot of things. They can get warmer, expand, explode, and even collapse into a black hole. They can not, as a rule, simply disappear. However, that’s what appears to have happened to an ultra-bright star in the …

Lunar Subsurface May Be Richer in Metals than Previously Thought Using data from the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a team of U.S. researchers has characterized the dust found at the bottom of the Moon’s craters and found evidence that the lunar subsurface might …

Astronomers Find Two Super-Earths Orbiting Nearby Red Dwarf The hard work of astronomers around the world using instruments like the Kepler Space Telescope has shown there’s no shortage of planets in the cosmos. Most of those exoplanets are far away, but a handful are right next door (on an astronomical …

Astronomers Give Asteroid Moon a New Name Before NASA Hits It With a Spacecraft We’d be out of luck if a killer asteroid had Earth in its crosshairs today, but NASA and the ESA are preparing for the first test of technology that could one day save the planet. The …

Planetary Researchers Explore Habitability of Europa’s Ocean A duo of U.S. planetary scientists has calculated that water in the subsurface ocean of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa could have been formed by breakdown of water-containing minerals due to either tidal forces or radioactive decay. Artist’s concept of ocean on Jupiter’s moon …

Was Hot and Had Subsurface Ocean: Study Pluto is thought to possess a subsurface ocean beneath its thick ice shell. It has generally been assumed that the dwarf planet formed out of cold material and then later developed its ocean due to warming from radioactive decay. By combining numerical simulations …

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter Detects Glowing Oxygen Using data from the NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery) ultraviolet and visible spectrometer instrument on board ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a team of researchers has detected green line dayglow emission in the atmosphere of Mars. An artist’s impression of …

Astronomers Detect Eerie Green Glow on Mars for the First Time The red planet is looking a bit less red today, but that might be a good thing. European Space Agency (ESA) scientists operating the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have snapped a photo of Mars with an eerie green glow …

Curiosity Spots Earth and Venus from Curiosity Spots Earth and Venus from The Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has captured new images of Earth and Venus as seen from the surface of the Red Planet. Two images of the night sky were combined to show Earth and …

NASA Awards Launch Contract for Water-Hunting Lunar Rover For the first time in years, NASA is gearing up to send humans to the Moon. The agency’s Artemis program aims to have boots on the Moon by 2024, but those boots will necessarily be preceded by wheels. VIPER is one of …