A gamma ray sensor built by LLNL scientists is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Credit:…
Category: Space
Frosty volcanoes discovered in Mars’s tropics
The frost sits atop the Tharsis volcanoes: the tallest volcanoes not only on Mars but in the Solar System. It was first seen by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), and…
Can’t stop won’t stop: Solar Orbiter shows the Sun raging on
The hyperactive sunspot region responsible for the beautiful auroras earlier in May was still alive and kicking when it rotated away from Earth’s view. Watching from the other side of…
The science behind splashdown—aerospace engineer explains how NASA and SpaceX get spacecraft safely back
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain For about 15 minutes on July 21, 1961, American astronaut Gus Grissom felt at the top of the world—and indeed he was. Grissom crewed the Liberty…
First of Its Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image
For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has captured a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to image directly. In this stunning image of the Serpens…
Detective work enables Perseverance Mars rover team to revive SHERLOC instrument
This image of NASA’s Perseverance rover gathering data on the “Walhalla Glades” abrasion was taken in the “Bright Angel” region of Jezero Crater by one of the rover’s front hazard…
A black hole of inexplicable mass
The black hole already weighed a billion solar masses when the universe was still in its infancy. The James Webb Space Telescope observed a galaxy in a young universe stage.…
US to launch satellite to better prepare for space weather
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is set to carry the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U into orbit from Florida. The United States is aiming Tuesday to launch a new satellite…
This impossibly massive black hole wasn’t very hungry during the dawn of time
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole at “cosmic dawn” that seems to be impossibly massive. The confusion comes from the fact that…
Revived technology used to count individual photons from distant galaxies
The SOAR Telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Credit: NOIRLab Using an instrument on the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope, researchers have obtained the first astronomical spectrum using skipper charge-coupled…
