Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 11, 2022
A new study using archival observations by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope found a common trait among distant worlds where the exotic clouds form. Most clouds on Earth are made of water, but beyond our planet they come in many chemical varieties. The top of Jupiter's atmosphere, for example, is blanketed in yellow-hued clouds made of ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide. And on worlds

Bethesda MD (SPX) Jul 11, 2022
Sending humans to Mars has been a dream of scientists and a large part of the population ever since Nicolaus Copernicus first postulated that it was a planet, about 500 years ago. Even before that first Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1, was sent into orbit some 64 years ago, a mission to Mars has been the subject of many science fiction articles and books. Over the past half-century technological adv

Washington (AFP) July 8, 2022
NASA said Friday the first cosmic images from the James Webb Space Telescope will include unprecedented views of distant galaxies, bright nebulae, and a faraway giant gas planet. The US, European and Canadian space agencies are gearing up for a big reveal on July 12 of early observations by the $10 billion observatory, the successor to Hubble that is set to reveal new insights into the origi

Washington (AFP) July 11, 2022
Space enthusiasts are holding their breath. The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful ever sent into orbit, is set Tuesday to unveil breathtaking new views of the Universe with a clarity that's never been seen before. Distant galaxies, bright nebulae and a faraway giant gas planet are among the observatory's first targets, US space agency NASA said Friday. But the images them

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 8, 2021
An amazing surprise greeted NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it touched down on the asteroid Bennu in 2020 - The asteroid was not what it seemed - according to research published Thursday in the journals Science and Science Advances. After it analyzed data from the spacecraft, NASA said it would have sunk into the asteroid if it hadn't fired thrusters to lift off as soon as it collecte

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jul 08, 2022
After analyzing data gathered when NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample from asteroid Bennu in October 2020, scientists have learned something astonishing: The spacecraft would have sunk into Bennu had it not fired its thrusters to back away immediately after it grabbed dust and rock from the asteroid's surface. It turns out that the particles making up Bennu's exterior are so l

Beijing (XNA) Jul 10, 2022
A joint research team of Chinese and Australian astronomers has detected a binary star system ejecting a common envelope, a key process of the binary star evolution, which could be of great importance to studies of the expansion of the universe and dark energy. This is the first time that scientists have observed direct evidence of the key process of the evolution of the common envelope of

Nuremberg, Germany (SPX) Jul 10, 2022
Lots of little dots with no apparent pattern: where laypeople may just see milky gray photos sprinkled with what looks like random crumbs, it is enough to make astronomers' hearts miss a beat. We are talking about historical photographic plates showing negatives of the night sky. Together with the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam and the universities of Hamburg and Tartu (Estonia

Madrid, Spain (SPX) Jul 10, 2022
Nitriles, a class of organic molecules with a cyano group, that is, a carbon atom bound with a triple unsaturated bond to a nitrogen atom, are typically toxic. But paradoxically, they are also a key precursor for molecules essential for life, such as ribonucleotides, composed of the nucleobases or 'letters' A, U, C, and G joined to a ribose and phosphate group, which together make up RNA. Now, a

Boca Raton LA (SPX) Jul 10, 2022
Terran Orbital Corporation (NYSE: LLAP), a global leader in satellite solutions, primarily serving the United States and Allied aerospace and defense industries, has announced the successful completion of CAPSTONE's first TCM burn (TCM-1). As the first statistical maneuver of the mission, TCM-1 is designed to clean up expected dispersions from the launch vehicle injection - enabling CAPSTONE to