Underground tunnel on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface after landing softly in the Apollo 11 Eagle module on the famous…
Sighting of red sprites from the International Space Station
Over the years, the International Space Station (ISS) has provided a unique vantage point for observing a variety of mysterious and intriguing phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere and beyond. From UFOs to strange…
Meteorites from Mars help us understand the planet’s interior
James Day, University of California, San Diego Of the more than 74,000 known meteorites – rocks that fall to Earth from asteroids or planets colliding together – only 385 or so stones came…
Hubble discovers massive black hole closest to Earth
An international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, taken over two decades, to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri,…
Nearby exoplanet smells like rotten eggs
ROBERTO MOLAR CANDANOSA/JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY The atmosphere of HD 189733 b, a gas giant the size of Jupiter, has traces of hydrogen sulphide, a molecule that not only gives off a bad smell,…
Webb identifies an icy world in the constellation of Cetus
When the exoplanet LHS 1140 b was discovered, astronomers hypothesized that it could be a mini-Neptune – that is, a predominantly gaseous planet, but smaller than Neptune. However, after analyzing the latest data…
A ‘scar’ on Mars is seen in detail in new satellite photos
The striking surface feature, called Aganippe Fossa, is a tectonic trench or graben – a long depression bounded on both sides by parallel normal faults. Astronomers first sighted it in 1930, but it…
China’s lunar success puts US in its sights
Simonetta Di Pippo, Bocconi University June 25 2024 marked a new “first” in the history of spaceflight. China’s robotic Chang’e 6 spacecraft delivered samples of rock back to Earth from a huge feature…
Prototypes for habitats far from planet Earth.
Maria Iacobo | School of Architecture and Planning A new MIT course this spring asked students to design what humans might need to comfortably work in and inhabit space. The time for these creations is…
Webb Telescope Captures Long-Anticipated Rare Phenomenon
The new image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a rare alignment of stellar jets in the Serpens Nebula, offering new perspectives on star formation. These protostellar jets, observed in the…