With the collapse of the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, international scientists are looking for a new radio telescope to use in their projects. The largest radio telescope in the world is the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang, Guizhou province in China. The telescope became the world's largest radio telescope when it was completed in 2016.
Something strange is going on at the closest star to the sun. A mysterious radio signal is coming from Proxima Centauri, which is too dim to be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Despite being too dim for us to see from Earth, it's a cosmic stone throw away at only 4.2 light-years away. A mysterious signal is emanating from the star, which was discovered in archived data gathered last year.
China's coming off a very successful mission with the Chang'e 5 returning its samples to Earth recently. With one complicated and successful mission under its belt, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has begun to talk about plans for future space missions. The agency outlined a new three-step plan detailing its plans for future moon and deep space exploration.
NASA is preparing astronauts for missions in the Orion spacecraft with the arrival of the spacecraft simulator at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The simulator allows astronauts, engineers, and flight controllers to train and practice for mission scenarios using Orion for future missions to the moon. Orion is the spacecraft that will be used for the first Artemis missions to the moon.
The James Webb Space Telescope has hit another key milestone paving the way for its launch next year. NASA detailed the achievement on Friday, explaining that the Webb team was able to unfold the telescope's sunshield and tension it. The sunshield will undergo the same process in space, kicking off a mission years in the making.
Two giant planets -- Saturn and Jupiter -- will draw close together (visually speaking) just ahead of Christmas, providing a unique winter solstice and the chance to see the closest 'conjunction' in 800 years. What does the celestial event mean and why should you check it out yourself? Here's a quick explanation.
NASA's Mars InSight spacecraft landed on the surface of the Red Planet on November 26, 2018. The goal of the mission is to study the interior of Mars. A bit more than two years later, or a bit more than one Martian year, the lander and its science instruments have detected more than 480 quakes.
NASA and the European Space Agency hope to bring a small piece of Mars back to Earth, a project that just got a big approval to enter Phase A. NASA announced the decision today, stating that the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission will 'mature critical technologies' needed for the effort, among other things.
SpaceX has scrubbed today's Falcon 9 launch, postponing the NROL-108 mission that was due to be the company's last of 2020. The three hour launch window opened this morning at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and was due to run for three hours, until noon EST.
On Wednesday, December 16, President Trump issued Space Policy Directive-6 (SPD-6) outlining America's strategy for Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion (SNPP). The plan outlines space nuclear systems power for spacecraft on missions where alternative power sources are inadequate. This type of power would be used in environments that are too dark for solar power or that are too far from Earth to allow spacecraft to carry sufficient quantities of chemical fuels.
SpaceX's recent activities have definitely taken up a large portion of space science news but it is hardly the only one with its eyes looking to the heavens. Establishing some presence in outer space is obviously a race among the world's superpowers and China just broke a few records, many of it its own, these past weeks. Its Chang'e 5 spacecraft has just returned from a historic lunar mission, bringing with it the Earth's first moon rocks and dirt in over four decades.
There's a storm raging on the surface of Neptune that is wider than the Atlantic Ocean. The storm responds in the northern hemisphere of the planet and was first spied by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018. Observations made in 2019 showed that the storm was drifting southward towards the equator of the planet.