Categories

Mission accomplished for space telescope Gaia

The space telescope Gaia has created the largest three-dimensional map of the Milky Way ever. On January 15, 2025, Gaia shut down after 11 years in space. But the research on data Gaia collected will continue for many years to come.

Go to Source

Solar Orbiter ready for close encounter with Venus

The European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to guide the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft through its closest encounter with Venus so far.

Go to Source

What would happen if a tiny black hole passed through your body?

In 1974, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a murder mystery with an interesting premise: Could you kill a man with a tiny black hole? I won’t spoil the story, though I’m willing to bet most people would argue the answer is clearly yes. Intense gravity, tidal forces, and the event horizon would surely lead […]

Why we think Theia existed

The giant-impact hypothesis posits that billions of years ago a Mars-sized body named Theia collided with the early Earth.

Go to Source

First astronaut with a disability cleared for space station mission

The first-ever astronaut with a physical disability has been cleared for a mission onboard the International Space Station, the European Space Agency announced on Friday.

Go to Source

How NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer will make a looping voyage to the moon

Before arriving at the moon, the small satellite mission will use the gravity of the sun, Earth, and moon over several months to gradually line up for capture into lunar orbit.

Go to Source

FAST uncovers emission properties of three long-period pulsars

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), astronomers have investigated the emission properties of three long-period pulsars. Results of the observational campaign are presented in a research paper published Feb. 6 on the arXiv preprint server.

Go to Source

Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket firm to cut 10% of workforce

Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin is laying off around 10 percent of its workforce following a period of rapid expansion, the firm’s chief executive told staff on Thursday.

Go to Source

Why asteroid 2024 YR4 is unlikely to hit Earth in 2032 and how scientists keep track

The threat of a newly discovered asteroid has risen slightly in the past few weeks, as the world’s telescopes rush to track its course. But the chance of an impact is still quite slim.

Go to Source

From collisions to stellar cannibalism—the surprising diversity of exploding white dwarfs

Astrophysicists have unearthed a surprising diversity in the ways in which white dwarf stars explode in deep space after assessing almost 4,000 such events captured in detail by a next-gen astronomical sky survey. Their findings may help us more accurately measure distances in the universe and further our knowledge of “dark energy.”

Go to Source

[…]

White dwarf stars may host more habitable exoplanets than expected

Among the roughly 10 billion white dwarf stars in the Milky Way galaxy, a greater number than previously expected could provide a stellar environment hospitable to life-supporting exoplanets, according to astronomers at the University of California, Irvine.

Go to Source

SPHEREx space telescope will seek life’s ingredients

Where is all the water that may form oceans on distant planets and moons? The SPHEREx astrophysics mission will search the galaxy and take stock.

Go to Source

Astronomers announce largest collection of comets found outside our solar system

For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting.

Go to Source

Yes, the odds of an asteroid striking Earth have doubled. No, you don’t need to worry

At the end of 2024, astronomers detected an asteroid in the night sky. It was given the designation Y, since it was discovered in the last half of December, and R4 since it was the 117th rock to be found in the last couple of weeks of December, and since it was discovered in 2024, […]

Supercomputer simulations of giant radio galaxy formation challenge current theoretical models

Enabled by supercomputing, University of Pretoria (UP) researchers have led an international team of astronomers that has provided deeper insight into the entire life cycle (birth, growth and death) of giant radio galaxies, which resemble “cosmic fountains”—jets of superheated gas that are ejected into near-empty space from their spinning supermassive black holes.

Go to Source

[…]