NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope could use the grisly death of stars ripped apart by black holes to hunt the universe’s first population of stellar bodies. These early stars, referred to (somewhat confusingly) as Population III (Pop III) stars, were very different from the sun and other stars seen in the cosmos today. That’s […]
Black hole week is in full swing, and to celebrate, NASA has explained how its next major astronomical instrument, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will hunt for tiny black holes that date back to the Big Bang. When we think of black holes, we tend to picture vast cosmic monsters like stellar-mass black holes […]
NASA’s planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is back in action, searching for worlds beyond the solar system’s limits. TESS came out of “safe mode” on May 3, resuming its search for worlds in other star systems known as extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) as they cross or “transit” the face of their parent stars, causing […]
The future of space travel depends on our ability to reach celestial pit stops faster and more efficiently. As such, NASA is working with a technology development company on a new propulsion system that could drop off humans on Mars in a relatively speedy two months’ time rather than the current nine month journey required […]
Launch recap: Scroll down to review live coverage of the Wednesday, May 8, liftoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on the Starlink 6-56 mission. Gear up for an afternoon SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Welcome to FLORIDA TODAY’s Space Team live coverage of the 2:42 […]
Imagine leaving work in L.A. or San Francisco a little early on a Friday afternoon and winding up with a drink on the beach in Maui before cocktail hour is over. Imagine Seattle to Tokyo in four hours, New York to London in three-plus. Many in the fledgling supersonic sector believe that supersonic commercial flights […]
United Launch Alliance technicians will work this week assessing — and potentially replacing — a mechanical gas-venting valve that triggered Monday’s scrub of NASA’s historic Boeing Starliner crewed flight test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. “It’s not dissimilar to many other valves like that. You have one in your home on your hot water […]
When NASA’s Lucy mission passed by the near-Earth asteroid Dinkinesh last November, it discovered that Dinkinesh had a companion — a little moonlet that astronomers soon named Selam. And now, scientists have measured Selam’s age. Their estimate suggests that tiny Selam separated from its larger partner Dinkinesh just 2 to 3 million years ago, making […]
On Monday (April 29), NASA restored the Hubble Space Telescope to full operation, returning it to its scientific activities after the spacecraft spent a week in safe mode. The celebratory mood was dampened somewhat, however, because NASA’s exoplanet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), remains in limbo. Ironically, TESS also stopped collecting science data […]
The journey into space is a long one, which gives many spacecraft time for a side quest or two during their missions. In the case of the European Space Agency‘s Hera mission, the side quest is a close encounter with Mars — more specifically, a good look at its moon: Deimos. Scheduled to launch in October, […]
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) may have discovered its first free-floating, or “orphaned,” planet. That’s a planet roaming the cosmos without a star, all alone. The potential discovery demonstrates that TESS can use a phenomenon first suggested by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago to spot these so-called rogue planets. Despite the fact that […]
NASA”s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) has earned its “neck” and “head,” aka its “mast,” meaning it now stands proudly at 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall. The photo below, taken in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center earlier this month, shows progress on quite the impressive robot. It is expected to take […]