Category: Solar System

Our solar system

James Webb telescope finds ancient galaxy larger than our Milky Way, and it’s threatening to upend cosmology

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a galaxy in the early universe that’s so massive, it shouldn’t exist, posing a “significant challenge” to the standard model of cosmology, according to the study authors. The galaxy, called ZF-UDS-7329, contains more stars than the Milky Way, despite having formed only 800 million years into the universe’s 13.8 billion-year life span. This means they were somehow born without dark matter seeding their formation, contrary to what the standard model of galaxy formation suggests. How this could have happened is unclear, but…

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‘A wonderful spectacle’: Photographer snaps rare solar eruption as ‘magnetic noose’ strangles the sun’s south pole

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A gigantic plume of plasma recently exploded from the sun’s south pole, where solar eruptions almost never occur. The explosion, which a photographer captured in stunning detail, is another telltale sign that the sun is about to enter its most active phase — the solar maximum.  The rare phenomenon occurred on Feb. 17, when a solar flare exploded from a sunspot near the sun’s south pole, releasing a gigantic column of ionized gas, or plasma, that towered around 124,300 miles (200,000 kilometers) above the solar surface — around 15 times…

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SpaceX to launch 24 Starlink satellites from Florida today

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SpaceX plans to launch 24 of its Starlink internet satellites from Florida today (Feb. 24), on the company’s 18th mission of 2024 already. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today during a four-hour window that opens at 4:59 p.m. EST (2159 GMT). You can watch the action live via SpaceX’s X account. Coverage will begin about five minutes before the window opens. Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night…

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Do you want to spend a year inside a mock Mars base for science? If so, NASA wants you.

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Applications are open for NASA’s next year-long mock Mars mission, which simulates the challenges crews may face during future expeditions on the Red Planet.  The ground-based mission, called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), consists of four volunteer crewmembers living and working inside an isolated 1,700-square-foot (158 square meters), 3D-printed habitat. Located at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Mars Dune Alpha habitat includes an adjoining 1,200-square-foot (111 square meters) enclosure used for simulated spacewalks.  “As NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration…

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India plans to include a helicopter on its next Mars mission

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India’s next Mars mission could include a helicopter that follows in the footsteps of NASA’s pioneering Ingenuity drone. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is currently working on the concept, which would fly along with an Indian Mars lander sometime around the start of the 2030s. India’s first mission to the Red Planet — the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also nicknamed “Mangalyaan” — launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. The spacecraft conducted science in orbit around the Red Planet for eight years before contact…

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises on launch pad ahead of debut liftoff (photo)

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Blue Origin’s powerful new rocket has gone vertical on the launch pad for testing, ahead of a possible debut flight later this year. The New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin rolled out on to Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday (Feb. 21), the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced. The heavy-lift rocket will be put through its paces in the coming weeks and months with “several demonstrations of cryogenic fluid loading, pressure control and the vehicle’s venting systems,” Blue Origin officials…

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3 tiny new moons found around Uranus and Neptune — and one is exceptionally tiny

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Astronomers have discovered two tiny moons orbiting Neptune and one circling Uranus, bringing the number of their known moons to 16 and 28 respectively. Uranus’ new moon, the first detected around the ice giant in over two decades and possibly the smallest of its ilk, is just 5 miles (8 kilometers) wide; it takes 680 days to complete one orbit around Uranus. In comparison, one Mars’ moons named Deimos, considered to be among the tiniest known moons in our solar system, is 8 miles (13 km) wide.  The new moon…

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Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander didn’t deploy camera during historic descent

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Sorry, space fans: We won’t be getting ground-level views of the first moon landing by an American spacecraft since the Apollo era. That epic touchdown came courtesy of Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, which lowered itself onto the gray dirt about 190 miles (300 kilometers) from the moon‘s south pole yesterday (Feb. 22). The success was hard-won. As they prepared for descent yesterday, mission team members discovered that Odysseus’ laser rangefinders, which the lander used to determine its altitude and horizontal velocity, weren’t working properly. So they switched over to an…

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NASA Eclipse Soundscapes Project will record how 2024’s total solar eclipse impacts nature

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While humans will enjoy the majesty of the total solar eclipse as it sweeps across several states in the U.S. on April 8, 2024, the celestial event will also be experienced by flora and fauna. That’s why the NASA-funded Eclipse Soundscapes Project will observe and collate the sights and sounds of the total solar eclipse to allow humanity to better understand how such events can impact wildlife. The agency is also urging the public to join in on this effort.  “Eclipses are often thought of as a visual event —…

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James Webb Space Telescope spots neutron star hiding in supernova wreckage

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have ended a nearly decade-long game of celestial hide-and-seek after they discovered a neutron star in the wreckage of a stellar explosion. Supernova 1987A represents the remains of an exploded star that once had a mass around 8 to 10 times that of the sun. It is located around 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy neighbor of the Milky Way. Supernova 1987A was first spotted by astronomers 37 years ago in 1987, hence the numerical aspect of…

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