Europe ending cooperation with Russia on life-hunting Mars rover

It’s official: Russia will no longer be part of Europe’s life-hunting Mars rover mission, which is scheduled to launch in the late 2020s. The European Space Agency (ESA) had been developing that mission in cooperation with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, as part of a broader program called ExoMars.  The original plan called for the rover, named Rosalind Franklin, to launch atop a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, a site in Kazakhstan that’s run by Roscosmos and the Russian military. Rosalind Franklin was also supposed to touch down with, and…

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How galaxies form: Theories, variants and growth

The universe contains billions of galaxies, of which our own Milky Way is just one. Often thought of as vast agglomerations of stars, which is how they look in photographs, galaxies actually contain other types of material as well, such as gas, dust and dark matter.  Astronomers know that galaxies began to form soon after the Big Bang, but they don’t yet fully understand the process by which they ended up as we see them today. Here are some of the most promising theories of how galaxies form, how and…

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NASA mission to monitor dust in Earth’s atmosphere will blast off with SpaceX this week

A new NASA mission will watch over dust-ups from orbit to quantify their effect on Earth’s climate.  Dubbed the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation mission (EMIT), the experiment is scheduled to launch Thursday (July 14) for an International Space Station mission. It will ride to orbit aboard the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Mission 25 (CRS-25) inside the Dragon cargo spacecraft. The mission aims to learn the composition of minerals that make up airborne dust. Mineral dust, also known as desert dust, “can influence weather, hasten snowmelt and fertilize plants on…

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Dark matter: Our review suggests it’s time to ditch it in favor of a new theory of gravity

The barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158. (Image credit: Wikimedia , CC BY-SA) This article was originally published at The Conversation. (opens in new tab) The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Indranil Banik (opens in new tab), Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Astrophysics, University of St Andrews We can model the motions of planets in the solar system quite accurately using Newton’s laws of physics. But in the early 1970s, scientists noticed that this didn’t work for disk galaxies — stars at their outer edges, far from the gravitational force of all…

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Lego International Space Station soars into 25% Prime Day discount

To celebrate Amazon Prime Day and NASA’s successes in space, soar into orbit for 25% less on a beautiful Lego space station set. The International Space Station Lego set is on sale right now at Amazon for $52.49 (opens in new tab). (Note that this price applies to “frustration-free” packaging, meaning a version that puts build elements into plastic bags.)  A similar discount is also available at Walmart for $52.49 (opens in new tab), and you can take advantage of this deal to celebrate NASA’s incredible new pictures from the…

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Celestron 114LCM computerized Newtonian telescope: Amazon Prime Day deal

Save money this Amazon Prime Day on a Celestron 114LCM computerized Newtonian telescope normally worth $439.95 now listed as just $364 on Amazon (opens in new tab) with a big saving of $75.95. That’s enough to purchase a separate eyepiece or Barlow lens to extend the use of the telescope even further. We’re a big fan of Celestron on Space.com with recent reviews of the Celestron Advanced VX 8 Edge HD and Celestron StarSense Explorer 8-inch Dobsonian both reaching five stars in our tests. Their binoculars are great too, with…

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What We See in the First Science Images from the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope released its first science images today. Here’s what these images show us. The post What We See in the First Science Images from the James Webb Space Telescope appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

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