space Archives | Page 8 of 19

The Webb Telescope Uncovered The Oldest ‘Nearly Dead’ Galaxy Astronomers Have Ever Seen

Burnout happens to galaxies, too, and this one hit the wall surprisingly early in the universe. A team of astronomers recently discovered a galaxy that finished making stars surprisingly early, at a time in the early universe when it should still have been going strong. Kavli Institute for Cosmology astrophysicist Tobias Looser and his colleagues […]

Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa May Be Missing a Key Ingredient for Life

— NASA/JPL Jupiter’s moon Europa has several key ingredients for life, but it may be short on one: oxygen. A new study out today in the journal Nature Astronomy used data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to simulate how much oxygen could be circulating in Europa’s oceans. It turns out, it is a lot less than […]

A Psychiatrist Reveals the Human Emotions That Could Halt Longterm Space Travel

— CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images Within the next few decades, NASA aims to land humans on the Moon, set up a lunar colony, and use the lessons learned to send people to Mars as part of its Artemis program. While researchers know that space travel can stress space crew members both physically and mentally and test […]

The Webb Telescope Just Uncovered A Possible Explanation for Why Giant Gaseous Planets Often Fail

It’s hard to build a family these days — and that’s especially true when the neighbors’ stellar winds keep eroding all the gas out of your protoplanetary disk. A team of astronomers recently watched stellar winds from nearby massive stars blowing gas away from the disk around a tiny newborn star — and this could explain […]

Look: Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus Moon Lander Sent Back What Could Be Its Final Photo

— Intuitive Machines In just a few hours, Odysseus — the first U.S.-based craft to land on the Moon in 52 years — will go quietly into the lunar night. It may never wake up again. And its human designers are okay with that. “No eulogies planned, only celebration and cheering,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve […]

DART Impact Redirect And Reshaped The Dimorphos Asteroid

— All About Space Magazine/Future/Getty Images NASA’s DART mission didn’t just put a dent in tiny asteroid moonlet Dimorphos: the impact may have actually changed Dimorphos’s shape entirely. Dimorphos, an asteroid about 500 feet wide, orbits a ten-times-larger asteroid called Didymos. Last February, NASA crashed a 580-kilogram spacecraft called DART into Dimorphos, knocking the moonlet […]

‘Odysseus’ Just Performed First American Moon Landing Since Apollo

— Intuitive Machines The Moon received a new robotic visitor on Thursday night. Odysseus, a lander from the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, landed on the Moon’s Malapert A crater, near the Moon’s South Pole, sometime around 6:23 p.m. Eastern. The 13-foot-tall spacecraft carries onboard a thermal protection shield from Columbia Sportswear, a selfie camera to […]

Hubble Takes a Stunning Photo of a Hidden Protostar 30 Times Bigger Than the Sun

— ESA/Hubble/NASA A star, hiding in plain sight within a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope, is one big baby. Stars fascinate astronomers. Not all of them are like our Sun, the 4.6-billion-year-old heart of the Solar System that has already reached middle age. Some, like the star at the center of a recently […]

Look! Epic Images Show ‘Odysseus’ Lander On Its Way To the Moon

— GREGG NEWTON/AFP/Getty Images Round two of NASA’s newest Odysseus has encountered no issues so far. The Intuitive Machines Nova-C-class lunar lander “is stable and receiving solar power,” NASA announced on Thursday. As Odysseus flies to the Moon, and up until about a week after landing, NASA instruments will take science data. They’ll survey how […]

Watch: SpaceX Could Finally Launch Intuitive Machines’ Moon Lander Tonight

— Anadolu/Anadolu/Getty Images Another commercial spaceflight company is about to try to land on the Moon, and this time, it’s carrying miniature art, digital archives, and NASA’s first prototype radio telescope for the Moon. Intuitive Machines hopes its Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, will launch to the Moon tonight aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Tonight’s […]