As this illustration of the Apollo VIII command module reentering Earth shows, heat shields protect the crew capsule from high temperatures. Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center Off the coast of Baja California in December 2022, sun sparkled over the rippling sea as waves sloshed around the USS Portland dock ship. Navy officials on the deck … Read more
The Game Awards 2024 ceremony (Dec. 12) was one of the best in years, mixing tons of surprises with welcome updates on video games that we’ve all been wondering about. This also meant learning more about upcoming space games and being shocked by new reveals that made our sci-fi-loving hearts very, very happy. These are … Read more
Neutron stars are so named because in the simplest of models they are made of neutrons. They form when the core of a large star collapses, and the weight of gravity causes atoms to collapse. Electrons are squeezed together with protons so that the core becomes a dense sea of neutrons. But we now know … Read more
Humanity needs to start addressing the growing space junk problem now, before it gets out of hand, scientists stress. Earth orbit is getting more and more crowded, with both active satellites and pieces of debris. There’s so much stuff up there that it’s far from alarmist to start worrying about the Kessler syndrome, a nightmare … Read more
NASA performs first aircraft accident investigation on another world by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 13, 2024 Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and AeroVironment are completing a detailed assessment of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s final flight on Jan. 18, 2024, which will be published in the next few … Read more
Friday, December 13The bright gibbous Moon passes 4° north of Uranus at 5 A.M. EST. At that time, the Moon sits in Aries the Ram, while Uranus is just over the border in far western Taurus the Bull. The two set together around 5 A.M. local time. You might have better luck spotting the ice … Read more
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter rests on the sandy dunes of the Red Planet’s surface following a crash during its final flight in January. Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA oversee investigations of aircraft accidents in U.S. airspace. But what happens when a crash occurs hundreds of millions of miles … Read more
Scientists have discovered seven more “dark comets,” and analysis of this haul suggests that the puzzling planetoids are divided into two distinct families, further deepening the mystery of why these objects look like asteroids but behave like comets. Of late, the dividing line between asteroids and comets has become blurred. There are “main-belt comets,” also … Read more
Not long ago, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) peered into Cosmic Dawn, the cosmological period when the first galaxies formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. In the process, it discovered something rather surprising. Not only were there more galaxies (and brighter ones, too!) than expected, but these galaxies had supermassive … Read more
A superflare erupts from a young sunlike star in this artist’s impression. Credit: CfA/Melissa Weiss Solar flares are bright flashes of light from the Sun that release large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. And while normal flares can release as much as 1025 joules of energy, so-called superflares, observed on other stars, are up to 10,000 … Read more