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SpaceX lines up Monday afternoon launch from Cape Canaveral

After a week of nasty weather across Florida, the business of launching rockets could get back on track Monday afternoon.

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Microgravity in space may cause cancer, but mimicking weightlessness could help researchers develop treatments

As space travel gains traction and astronauts spend increasing amounts of time in space, studying its effects on health has become increasingly critical.

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Helioseismology method can measure solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions

Researchers have pioneered an innovative method using helioseismology to measure the solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions. Their work, published in Nature Communications, not only reveals gaps in our understanding of atomic physics but also confirms recent experimental results, thereby opening new perspectives in astrophysics and nuclear physics.

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One large Milky Way galaxy or many galaxies? 100 years ago, Edwin Hubble settled astronomy’s ‘Great Debate’

A hundred years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble dramatically expanded the size of the known universe. At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January 1925, a paper read by one of his colleagues on his behalf reported that the Andromeda nebula, also called M31, was nearly a million light years away—too remote to be […]

Hubble studies the Tarantula Nebula’s outskirts

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

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Experiments corroborate theory about how Titan maintains its atmosphere

Southwest Research Institute partnered with the Carnegie Institution for Science to perform laboratory experiments to better understand how Saturn’s moon Titan can maintain its unique nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system and the only one that has a significant atmosphere.

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There are places on Earth that could have life but don’t. What can we learn?

About 99% of Earth is uninhabitable; in deep underground places with high pressure and temperature, even the toughest bacteria cannot survive. However, there are places where life thrives, from tiniest toughest bacteria to the largest elephant. Then there are places that are habitable but are devoid of life; lava flows are a great example, as […]

Could ocean worlds support life?

There might be a type of exoplanet without dry land. They’re called “Hycean” worlds, a portmanteau of “hydrogen” and “ocean.” They’re mostly or entirely covered in oceans and have thick hydrogen atmospheres.

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There’s more than just gravity at work in the solar system

Ever since Isaac Newton famously talked about gravity, its dominance as a force in our solar system has been well known. It’s responsible for the orbits of the planets and their satellites, but there are other forces that have shaped our planetary neighborhood.

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Astronomers discover new lensed, dual and projected quasars

Chinese astronomers have investigated quasar candidates from the DESI Legacy Surveys (DESI-LS) photometry catalog. As a result, they detected 19 strongly-lensed, dual and projected quasars. The finding was reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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Artemis II stacking operations update

Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program continue stacking the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s twin solid rocket booster motor segments for the agency’s Artemis II mission, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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A recent fast radio burst calls into question what astronomers believed they knew

Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves—so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs)—emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor.

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A private US spacecraft headed to the moon captures a glorious view of Earth

A private U.S. spacecraft bound for the moon has captured stunning images of Earth one week into its flight.

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Space researchers build traffic light system to warn of dangerous solar storms

Researchers have created an improved traffic light system for predicting geomagnetic storms. They are now testing how well these algorithms can prepare us for incoming space storms that can wreak havoc by knocking out satellites in space and power grids on Earth.

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Astronauts’ eyes weaken during long space missions, raising concerns for Mars travel

The low levels of gravity (microgravity) in space cause significant changes in astronauts’ eyes and vision after six to 12 months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), according to a study published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

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