Beijing (XNA) Feb 07, 2023
China will push forward its phase-4 lunar exploration program this year, including a planned mission to bring 2 kilograms of samples from the far side of the moon back to Earth, Wu Weiren, chief designer of the country's lunar exploration program, revealed on Monday. Wu said China will continue its lunar research with the Chang'e-6, Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 missions. The Chang'e-6 mission i

London, UK (SPX) Feb 07, 2023
A galaxy has been discovered that mirrors the very early version of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy, dubbed 'The Sparkler', is embedded in a system of globular clusters and satellite galaxies, and appears to be swallowing them as it grows. The research was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The discovery of The Sparkler was made using some of the fir

Video: 00:05:36 Five-minute behind-the-scenes documentary covering the story behind the application of the Galileo tribute plaque to ESA’s Juice spacecraft.

A previously unknown 100–200-metre asteroid — roughly the size of Rome’s Colosseum — has been detected by an international team of European astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their project used data from the calibration of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), in which the team serendipitously detected an interloping asteroid. The object is likely the smallest observed to date by Webb and may be an example of an object measuring under 1 kilometer in length within the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. More observations are needed to better characterize this object’s nature and properties.

Image: Orion blueprint

Washington DC (UPI) Feb 5, 2021
SpaceX will delay the launch of the Hispasat Amazonas Nexus mission until Monday at 5:32 p.m. EST, after unfavorable weather conditions held up Sunday's planned launch. The rocket was scheduled to lift off at 5:32 p.m. EST on Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It was initially delayed by two hours as conditions were 30% favorable for lift off, SpaceX said. It was

Boston MA (SPX) Feb 03, 2023
If she hits just the right pitch, a singer can shatter a wine glass. The reason is resonance. While the glass may vibrate slightly in response to most acoustic tones, a pitch that resonates with the material's own natural frequency can send its vibrations into overdrive, causing the glass to shatter. Resonance also occurs at the much smaller scale of atoms and molecules. When particles che

Cambridge UK (SPX) Feb 03, 2023
A collaboration between scientists at Cambridge and UCL has led to the discovery of a new form of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other and may hold the key to understanding this most famous of liquids. The new form of ice is amorphous. Unlike ordinary crystalline ice where the molecules arrange themselves in a regular pattern, in amorphous ice the molecules are in a

Glasgow, Scotland (SPX) Feb 01, 2023
The 'mirrors' exist for only a fragment of time but could help to reduce the size of ultra-high power lasers, which currently occupy buildings the size of aircraft hangars, to university basement sizes. They have potential to be developed into a variety of plasma-based, high damage-threshold optical elements that could lead to small footprint, ultra-high-power, ultra-short pulse laser syst

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 03, 2023
Creeping from just a finger's width up to a few feet per year, slow-moving landslides occur naturally throughout the world. They typically are detected inching downslope in rocky areas with high seasonal precipitation and clay-rich soil, and they can take months to years - even centuries - to develop. Yet they can also bring sudden violence. Thousands of landslides are flowing, slipping, topplin