Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Invisible ‘flickering’ on the sun could predict potentially dangerous solar flares hours in advance

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Shining loops of plasma on the surface of the sun “flicker” hours before they unleash potentially dangerous solar flares, a new study shows. The new findings could help create more reliable space weather forecasts, researchers say. Solar flares are violent outbursts of electromagnetic radiation that shoot from the sun when invisible magnetic field lines at the sun’s surface get twisted up until they eventually snap. These outbursts most commonly occur around sunspots — dark patches where magnetic field lines poke through our home star’s surface — and often pull up…

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What is Section 31? The ‘Star Trek’ spy organization explained

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The United Federation of Planets may hold itself up as a futuristic utopia but it also has a dark underbelly. Covert intelligence organization Section 31 carries out the missions Starfleet pretends don’t happen, bending the rules in the name of keeping everyone else safe. Since making its first appearance in “Deep Space Nine“, Section 31 has broken cover in numerous “Star Trek” TV shows and movies. Now, Starfleet’s guilty secret is getting its very own movie, as Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou is brought back into service with an all-new team…

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Scientists discover exoplanet with supersonic winds — the fastest in the known universe

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Astronomers have found winds on a distant world that blow at a phenomenal 5.6 miles per second (9 kilometers per second), or 20,500 miles per hour (33,000 kilometers per hour) — the fastest winds ever measured on a planet. The faraway world, a gas giant called WASP-127b that was discovered in 2016, orbits a star 520 light-years from Earth. It zips around its host star in just four days, following a slightly skewed orbit. The exoplanet is also likely tidally locked to its star the same way the moon is…

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Blue Origin to simulate moon gravity on Jan. 28 New Shepard suborbital launch

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Blue Origin will launch the 29th mission of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle next week, on an uncrewed research flight that will simulate lunar gravity conditions. The mission, known as NS-29, is scheduled to lift off from Blue Origin‘s West Texas launch site on Tuesday (Jan. 28) at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 10 a.m. local Texas time). The company, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, will webcast the action live, beginning 15 minutes before liftoff. New Shepard is a reusable rocket-capsule combo named after Alan Shepard, the first…

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NASA honors fallen astronauts with ‘Day of Remembrance’ ceremony

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NASA honored its fallen space explorers during its annual “Day of Remembrance” on Thursday (Jan. 23). The agency held events at a number of its facilities around the nation, including Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and Johnson Space Center in Houston. The proceedings commemorated the lives lost in NASA’s three space tragedies — the Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, the space shuttle Challenger explosion in January 1986 and the shuttle Columbia disaster in February 2003. “It is an emotional and solemn reminder that we cannot let the decades…

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Growing up and going out: Beyond the cradle (op-ed)

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Rick Tumlinson is the founder of SpaceFund, a venture capital firm investing in space startups. He also founded the Space Frontier Foundation, Earthlight Foundation, and New Worlds Institute and was a founding board member of the X Prize Foundation. He contributed the following piece — an edited essay from his upcoming book “Why Space: The Purpose of People,” to be published in the spring of 2025 — to Space.com’s Expert Voices section. My daughter is about to turn 12. To her, I am an ancient being; to me, she is…

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‘Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles’ continues to be the most fascinating ‘The Phantom Menace’ tie-in video game

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Somehow, Jedi Power Battles has returned. This won’t ring a bell if you’re a Star Wars fan who’s stuck to only the best Star Wars games of all time over the years, but many Jedi veterans will celebrate this return to a profoundly off-beat action romp which revisited The Phantom Menace as a ‘beat ’em up‘ game. The developer-publisher Aspyr is no stranger to bringing retro Star Wars video games back from the dead, and, so far, the wins outweigh the failures. Last year, Aspyr worked with Lucasfilm Games to…

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Chinese commercial Ceres-1 rocket launches 5 weather satellites to orbit (video)

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A Chinese commercial space launch company is continuing its success with a small solid rocket ahead of a more ambitious launch later this year. The Ceres-1 four-stage solid propellant rocket lifted off at 5:11 a.m. EST on Jan. 20 (1011 GMT; or 8:11 p.m. local time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China. Galactic Energy, the Ceres-1 manufacturer and operator, announced in a statement that five satellites had been successfully inserted into preplanned orbits. Aboard the flight were four Yunyao-1 commercial meteorological satellites (satellites 37-40)…

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Strange ‘quasi-moon’ of Earth gets named Cardea, after goddess of door hinges

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Until we live in a world based purely on sliding doors, door hinges will remain some of the most unsung heroes of our society. We’d still be able to saunter through door frames, sure, but nothing would so seamlessly connect the place we once were with the place we are going. On a metaphorical level, door hinges represent an intermediate state we use to move back and forth, and decide when to lock ourselves in the locations of here or there. It is thus only fitting for a goddess to…

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Astrophotographer captures a ‘Great Dragon’ in the Pelican Nebula (photo)

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Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “Skyscapes” that connect both Earth and the night sky. The image features a dark region of space found between the Pelican Nebula and the Cygnus Wall, which are both part of the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. This…

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