Space Exploration

  The monster black hole that anchors our galaxy is safely 28,000 light years away from Earth. That’s a good thing, too. The region around that back hole is overflowing with dangerous radiation and fragmented stars. Astronomers observing the center of the Milky Way have spotted some unusual features that …

In June 2018, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spacecraft and sample return mission Hayabsua-2 arrived at the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu. The first scientific results from the mission, published this week in a trio of papers in the journal Science, portray Ryugu as a porous ‘pile of rubble.’ This …

A team of planetary scientists at the Australian National University found that our planet is made of the same elements as the Sun but has less of the volatile elements such as hydrogen, helium, oxygen and nitrogen. Wang et al compared new protosolar elemental abundances with recent estimates of bulk …

  The Sun is a relatively quiet G-type star (G2V), but the key word is “relatively.” While it avoids the massive storms known to affect so-called flare stars, it occasionally releases both solar flares and coronal mass ejections. On March 20, NASA detected such a flare with an associated CME. …

  NASA is fast running out of seats on Russian Soyuz capsules, so the long-delayed Commercial Crew Program will soon be the only way to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX is on-target to get its Dragon II capsule ready for crewed flights this summer, …

  Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have to deal with hazards associated with living and working in an environment completely inhospitable to humans. If anything happens to the station’s thin skin, it could spell disaster for the crew. As if that’s not enough danger, bacteria become more pathogenic …

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission made the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from the surface of an asteroid. This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on January 19 was created by combining two images taken on board NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. …

  Last December, the Earth got a Christmas present we weren’t even aware of. The second-most powerful asteroid detonation in 30 years struck on December 18, when a bolide exploded over the Bering Sea. The blast was an estimated 173kt — roughly 11.5x more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped …

  SpaceX is on a roll lately. After completing the first full test of its crew-ready Dragon capsule last week, the company is on the verge of launching the interplanetary Starship on its first test flight. Before you send a spacecraft into space, you need to figure out how to …

  If someone asks you what planet is closest to Earth, you’ll probably blurt out Venus. That’s a perfectly normal thing to say, but it’s also wrong. Numerous websites and even NASA itself say Venus is our closest planetary neighbor. A new article in Physics Today lays out a more …