Tag Archives: Space

A false-color image of NGC 6334 from multiple telescopes. The area is believed to be a hotspot of furious star birth. Credit: S. Willis (CfA+ISU); ESA/Herschel; NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Spitzer; CTIO/NOAO/AURA/NSF Over over 50% of high mass stars reside in multiple star systems. But due to their complex orbital interactions, physicists have a difficult time understanding just how stable and long-lived these ...

Artist’s concept of the Amazonas Nexus satellite in orbit, with its antennas and solar arrays unfurled. Credit: Thales Alenia Space A nearly five-ton satellite for the Spanish company Hispasat is ready for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Sunday, weather permitting, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, beginning a mission to provide in-flight internet and other communications services over the Americas and ...

Simulation of a possible quadrupole magnetic field configuration for a pulsar with hot spots in only the southern hemisphere. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center A team of astronomers have used a model of earthquakes to understand glitches in the timing of pulsars. Their results suggest that pulsars may have interiors that are far stranger than can be imagined. Pulsars ...

STORY WRITTEN FOR  & USED WITH PERMISSION The seven-person crew of the space shuttle Columbia in orbit during their 16-day science mission. From left to right (in red): Kalpana Chawla, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark; (in blue): David Brown, William McCool, and Michael Anderson. Credit: NASA Twenty years ago this Wednesday — on Feb. 1, 2003, at 8:48:39 a.m. EST — a ...

The differences between Earth and Venus are obvious to us. One is radiant with life and adorned with glittering seas, and the other is a scorching, glowering hellhole, its volcanic surface shrouded by thick clouds and visible only with radar. But the difference wasn’t always clear. In fact, we used to call Venus Earth’s sister planet. Can astronomers tell exo-Earths ...

Astronaut Koichi Wakata, in foreground at right, works on the space station’s truss during a spacewalk Thursday. Astronaut Nicole Mann is visible in the background at left. Credit: NASA TV / Spaceflight Now Continuing work left over from a spacewalk last month, astronauts Nicole Mann and Koichi Wakata headed outside the International Space Station Thursday to finish installing a mounting ...

Kilonovae are extraordinarily rare. Astronomers think there are only about 10 of them in the Milky Way. But they’re extraordinarily powerful and produce heavy elements like uranium, thorium, and gold. Usually, astronomers spot them after they’ve merged and emitted powerful gamma-ray bursts (GRBs.) But astronomers using the SMARTS telescope say they’ve spotted a kilonova progenitor for the first time. A ...

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on the Starlink 2-6 mission with 49 Starlink internet satellites and a rideshare payload for the Italian company D-Orbit. SpaceX Webcast Source

If you want to know where you are in space, you’d better bring along a map. But it’s a little more complicated than riding shotgun on a family road trip. Spacecraft navigation beyond Earth orbit is usually carried out by mission control. A series of radio communication arrays across the planet, known as the Deep Space Network, allows operators to ...

Watch our live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 5-3 mission at 2:43 a.m. EST (0743 GMT) on Feb. 2 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. SFN Live  SpaceX’s launch team in Florida is counting down to an overnight blastoff early Thursday, with a Falcon 9 rocket ...