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An international team of researchers under the leadership of Dr Florian Peißker at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Astrophysics has discovered a very young star in its formation phase near the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) at the centre of our Milky Way. The star is only several tens of thousands of …

Baby star near the black hole in the middle of our Milky Way: It exists after all Read More »

Measuring the fuel supply on Odyssey, a decades-old spacecraft without a fuel gauge, is no easy task. Since NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter to the Red Planet almost 22 years ago, the spacecraft has looped around Mars more than 94,000 times. That’s about the equivalent of 1.37 billion miles (2.21 billion kilometers), a …

Engineers Keep an Eye on Fuel Supply of NASA’s Oldest Mars Orbiter Read More »

  Every six months, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE, spacecraft completes one trip halfway around the Sun, taking images in all directions. Stitched together, those images form an “all-sky” map showing the location and brightness of hundreds of millions of objects. Using 18 all-sky maps produced by the spacecraft (with …

NASA Telescope Takes 12-Year Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky Read More »

Scientists have discovered a new source of ‘electron rain’ that is showering Earth with particles, a phenomena that could have a hazardous effect on satellites, spacecraft and astronauts. Rapid “electron precipitation” is caused by whistler waves, a type of electromagnetic wave that ripples through plasma in space and affects electrons in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Researchers …

Electron rain’ falling to Earth could be hazardous to satellites, spacecraft and astronauts, scientists say Read More »

  The two agencies are partnering on a satellite to understand the effects of different types of particle pollution on human health. NASA and the Italian space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) are partnering to build and launch the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission, an effort to investigate the health impacts of tiny airborne …

NASA and Italian Space Agency Join Forces on Air Pollution Mission Read More »

    Dignitaries from the U.S. and Indian space agencies, along with members of the media, were invited to see NISAR’s science payload in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory clean room. It’s nearly time for the scientific heart of NISAR – short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar – an Earth science satellite being jointly built by …

NASA-ISRO Earth Science Instruments Get Send-Off Before Moving to India Read More »

Cambridge, Mass. – For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star. The stricken world appears destined to spiral closer and closer to its maturing star until collision and ultimate obliteration. The discovery offers new insights into the long-winded process of planetary orbital decay …

Alien Planet Found Spiraling to its Doom around an Aging Star Read More »

The veteran rover captured a dazzling sunset at the start of a new cloud-imaging campaign. Martian sunsets are uniquely moody, but NASA’s Curiosity rover captured one last month that stands out. As the Sun descended over the horizon on Feb. 2, rays of light illuminated a bank of clouds. These “sun rays” are also known …

NASA’s Curiosity Views First ‘Sun Rays’ on Mars Read More »

The research uses archival NASA data to show that Venus may be losing heat from geologic activity in regions called coronae, possibly like early tectonic activity on Earth. Earth and Venus are rocky planets of about the same size and rock chemistry, so they should be losing their internal heat to space at about the …

Study Finds Venus’ ‘Squishy’ Outer Shell May Be Resurfacing the Planet Read More »

Future planetary missions could explore in extremely cold temperatures that stymie existing spacecraft, thanks to a project under development at JPL. When NASA returns to the Moon with Artemis, the agency and its partners will reach unexplored regions of the lunar surface around the South Pole, where it can get much colder at night than …

NASA Is Testing a New Robotic Arm That Really Knows How to Chill Out Read More »