Washington DC (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft releases a capsule with material from asteroid Bennu onto the Utah desert on Sept. 24, it will become the latest in a line of missions to gather samples from space and deliver them to Earth. Collecting material from space is a challenging feat that requires teams of dedicated scientists and engineers, innovative technology, and patience. But the scientific break

Providence RI (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
A study led by Brown University researchers offers new insights into how water from melting ice could have played a recent role in the formation of ravine-like channels that cut down the sides of impact craters on Mars. The study, published in Science, focuses on Martian gullies, which look eerily similar to gullies that form on Earth in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and are caused by wate

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 28, 2023
We made it! We are peeking up over the edge of the ridge that we have been trying to climb for a few weeks now. The view ahead is spectacular but it's worth pausing for a minute to look back down into the canyon. You can faintly see rover tracks in the centre of the image, left behind as we slowly made our way up the hill. Lots of slipping and sliding, and drives ending too soon or terminating o

Charlottesville VA (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the protoplanetary disk around a young star have discovered the most compelling chemical evidence to date of the formation of protoplanets. The discovery will provide astronomers with an alternate method for detecting and characterizing protoplanets when direct observations or imaging are not possible. The results

Kashiwa, Japan (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
New images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed, for the first time, starlight from two massive galaxies hosting actively growing black holes - quasars - seen less than a billion years after the Big Bang. A new study in Nature this week finds the black holes have masses close to a billion times that of the Sun, and the host galaxy masses are almost one hundred times larger, a ratio

Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
How are plasma eruptions in near-Earth space formed? Vlasiator, a model designed at the University of Helsinki for simulating near-Earth space, demonstrated that the two central theories on the occurrence of eruptions are simultaneously valid: eruptions are explained by both magnetic reconnection and kinetic instabilities. Rapid plasma eruptions known as plasmoids take place on the nightsi

Paris (ESA) Jun 30, 2023
Euclid of Alexandria is considered to be the 'father' of geometry. In his most famous work, 'Elements', he brought together the knowledge of mathematics available in his time, presented it in a consistent way and defined a strict method of proof that became the model for later mathematics. Many structures, theorems and proofs are therefore named after Euclid - and now also a space telescope. The

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
An international research team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe disks around 19 protostars with a very high resolution to search for the earliest signs of planet formation. This survey was motivated by the recent findings that planet formation may be well-underway in the more-evolved proto-planetary disks, but until now there had been no systematic study to

Madison WI (SPX) Jun 30, 2023
Our Milky Way galaxy is an awe-inspiring feature of the night sky, viewable with the naked eye as a horizon-to-horizon hazy band of stars. Now, for the first time, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has produced an image of the Milky Way using neutrinos-tiny, ghostlike astronomical messengers. In an article to be published tomorrow, June 30, in the journal Science, the IceCube Collaboration, an in

A European spacecraft is set to launch on a mission to help astronomers resolve an “embarrassing situation” in cosmology, although the launch itself is another kind of embarrassing situation for Europe.