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Brown dwarf with stormy atmosphere discovered orbiting red dwarf via three observation techniques

By combining the power of ground-based and space-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a new brown dwarf—a type of object that lies between a star and a planet—orbiting a small star about 55 light-years from Earth. In addition, infrared observations revealed variations in its brightness, suggesting that clouds and storms may be forming and moving within […]

Space exploration in the backyard, on a budget: How NASA simulates conditions in space without blasting off

Humanity’s drive to explore has taken us across the solar system, with astronaut boots, various landers and rovers’ wheels exploring the surfaces of several different planetary bodies. These environments are generally hostile to human and equipment health, so designing and executing these missions requires a lot of planning, testing and technological development.

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Giant magnetofossils suggest ancient ocean life had built-in ‘GPS’ and may shed light on Mars particles

Some ancient marine organisms produced mysterious magnetic particles of unusually large size, which can now be found as fossils in marine sediments.

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How a nutrient spark turned Earth into an oxygen world

A new study has revealed how phosphorus, a nutrient essential for photosynthesis, surged into ancient oceans and started Earth’s first major rise in atmospheric oxygen more than 2 billion years ago.

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Five different carbon-based compounds discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Astrophysicists from Keele University, alongside an international research team supported by NASA, detected large complex organic molecules in ices outside the Milky Way for the first time—offering a glimpse into the chemistry of the early universe.

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Constraints on solar power satellites are more ground-based than space-based, says study

Space-based solar power has been gaining more and more traction recently. The recent success of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, which demonstrated the feasibility of transmitting power from space to the ground, has been matched by a number of pilot projects throughout the world, all of which are hoping to tap into some of the […]

US soliciting new bids for Moon mission amid SpaceX delays: NASA chief

NASA is seeking bids for its planned Moon mission to compete against SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company that the US space agency’s chief said Monday is “behind.”

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What do we do if SETI is successful?

The Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is evolving. We’ve moved on from the limited thinking of monitoring radio waves to checking for interstellar pushing lasers or even budding Dyson swarms around stars. To match our increased understanding of the ways we might find intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) […]

Starship could cut the travel time to Uranus in half

The ice giants remain some of the most interesting places to explore in the solar system. Uranus in particular has drawn a lot of interest lately, especially after the 2022 Decadal Survey from the National Academies named it as the highest priority destination. But as of now, we still don’t have a fully fleshed out […]

Alien civilizations may only be detectable for a cosmic blink of an eye

Is anybody out there? Probably. Most stars have planets; we’ve discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets thus far, and the most basic statistics point toward the existence of countless potentially habitable worlds in the universe. But when we have looked for any scrap of evidence for alien civilizations, we have found nothing so far. The question […]

Distant galaxy A1689-zD1 found to have unusually low dust-to-gas ratio

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers has carried out comprehensive multiwavelength observations of a distant massive galaxy known as A1689-zD1.

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Remember the moon rover? Teams test a possible Artemis version

It’s been more than 18 months since NASA narrowed to three the field of competitors vying to build the nation’s next moon rover.

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What happened to those ‘little red dots’ Webb observed?

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began operations, one of its earliest surveys was of galaxies that existed during the very early universe. In December 2022, these observations revealed multiple objects that appeared as “little red dots” (LRDs), fueling speculation as to what they might be. While the current consensus is that these objects […]

How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometers away

After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.

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Researchers’ autonomous system makes it easier to transport cargo on the moon

Autonomy algorithms developed by researchers at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) could one day make cargo transport on the moon safer and more efficient for astronauts.

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