Two of NASA's space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the chemical fingerprint of a planet between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. The planet the two teamed up to analyze is Gliese 3470 b known as GJ 3470 b, and the planet is thought to be a cross between Neptune and Earth.
The Hubble space telescope is still orbiting and looking at the incredible events that are happening in the universe around us. With the 4th of July celebration kicking off tomorrow, NASA is celebrating the holiday by showing us an incredible image of a giant firework in the vastness of space. The image here was captured using the Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 and maps the UV glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas, which is shown in blue, of Eta Carinae.
NASA tested a critical component of the Orion spacecraft this week with the Ascent Abort-2 flight test at Cape Canaveral. The test lasted about three minutes and used a test version of the Orion crew module. The Orion was pushed into the sky to an altitude of 6-miles atop a modified Peacekeeper missile that was procured through the U.S. Air Force and built by Northrop Grumman.
NASA has run into an issue on the surface of Mars with one of the instruments on the InSight probe. The instrument is part of a tool called the "Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package" but is informally known as the mole. Mole possibly hit rock shortly after deployment in March and has been sitting unable to dig since then.
'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system, probably isn't an alien spaceship, a new study concludes. That doesn't mean the mystery is over, however, with the same study citing oddities that have left scientists baffled, including the object's unusual spin pattern and cigar-like shape. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Private American space robotics company Astrobotic has received a $5.6 million contract from NASA to help develop an autonomous lunar rover called MoonRanger. The development will take place in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, according to Astrobotic, which received the contract under NASA's Lunar Surface and Instrumentation Technology Payload (LSITP) program.
Five of SpaceX's Starlink constellation satellites are set to come burning back through Earth's atmosphere, an unexpectedly low attrition rate following the company's launch in late May. A total of sixty Starlink satellites launched on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, the first steps toward Elon Musk's company beginning a satellite broadband service that could eventually bring connectivity to historically offline regions.
Researchers have found evidence that the formation of black holes doesn't require the remnant of a star to form. The team says their new evidence may explain the presence of extremely massive black holes at the earliest stages of the universe. The discovery is based on the assumption that supermassive black holes form quickly over short periods of time and then stop.
Researchers at Yokohama National University have successfully teleported quantum information securely within the confines of a diamond. The team says that the study has significant implications for quantum information technology and for how data is stored and shared in the future. Researcher Hideo Kosaka says that quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum information into an otherwise inaccessible space.
Today's crocodiles and alligators may be voracious carnivores, but their early relatives had a vegetarian diet, surprising new research has revealed. While it's hard to imagine a modern-day croc opting for the foliage in a Florida garden, rather than eyeing the pets that live there, studies of fossilized crocodyliform teeth suggest that wasn't always the case.
The Mars 2020 rover has gained its robotic arm, with NASA fitting the SUV-sized robotic explorer with the primary tool with which it will perform experiments on the red planet. The new milestone comes shortly after the rover was shod with its six wheels for the first time, as the countdown to its 2020 launch nears.
With the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, NASA has restored the Mission Control Center responsible for shepherding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the lunar surface. Named a National Historic Landmark back in 1985, the facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston has been painstakingly returned to how it would have looked five decades ago, when space fervor was at its height.