Science

Israel joins rush to the moon as first lunar lander launched by Elon Musk's Space X

ASpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday night carrying Israel's first lunar lander on a mission that if successful will make the Jewish state only the fourth nation to achieve a controlled touchdown on the moon's surface. The unmanned robotic lander dubbed Beresheet - Hebrew for the biblical phrase "in the beginning" - soared into space from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at about 8.45 pm.EST (1.45 GMT Friday) atop the 23-story-tall rocket. Beresheet, about the...
Tags: Japan, Spacex, Elon Musk, Florida, Science, Indonesia, California, China, India, Israel, US, Nasa, Earth, United States, European Space Agency, Falcon

'Breakneck speed' mini moon hurtles around Neptune at 20,000mph

Astronomers confirm orbit of tiny moon Hippocamp via multiple images from HubbleA miniature moon that whizzes around Neptune at breakneck speed has been tracked by astronomers working from the US.The speck of a moon, no more than 21 miles across, hurtles around the distant gas giant at about 20,000 miles an hour, 10 times faster than our own moon circles Earth, scientists said. Continue reading...
Tags: Astronomy, Space, Science, US, World news, US news, Nasa, European Space Agency, Planets, Hubble Space Telescope, Neptune, Hippocamp

The 'Rubber Ducky' Comet Is Stressed and Keeps Cracking Its Neck

The rubber ducky comet's head has spent 4.5 billion years trying to twist away from its neck. And that's caused some stress fractures.Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which the European Space Agency explored for two years using its Rosetta probe, takes its name from its dual-lobe shape -- which gives it a duck-like head, neck and body. Now, thanks to a new three-dimensional analysis of images from the Rosetta mission, researchers believe the comet is full of fissures, some of them pierci...
Tags: Science, France, Nasa, Earth, Rosetta, European Space Agency, Neptune, Churyumov Gerasimenko, Nature Geoscience, Aix Marseille University, ESA Rosetta Navcam, Olivier Groussin

'River of Stars' Streaming Through the Milky Way Was Hiding in Plain Sight for 1 Billion Years

One billion years ago, a cluster of stars formed in our galaxy. Since then, that cluster has whipped four long circles around the edge of the Milky Way. In that time, the Milky Way's gravity has stretched that cluster out from a blob into a long stellar stream. Right now, the stars are passing relatively close to Earth, just about 330 light-years away. And scientists say that river of stars could help determine the mass of the entire Milky Way..Astronomers have seen these stars before, mixed...
Tags: Science, Earth, European Space Agency, University of Vienna, Alves, Joao Alves

Andromeda galaxy will deliver a 'glancing blow' to our Milky Way later than expected

Astronomers have long suspected that the colossal Andromeda galaxy would, in billions years, collide with our humble Milky Way. The collision was forecast to happen in some 3.9 billion years. But after astronomers analyzed new data captured by the European Space Agency's star-surveying satellite Gaia, they now put the imminent date at 4.5 billion years — so 600 million years later than initially expected. The event, detailed in The Astrophysical Journal, is characterized as a "swipe" rathe...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, European Space Agency, Milky Way, New Times, Dennis Overbye, Astrophysical Journal, Andromeda, Timo Prusti, ESA Gaia Project Scientist, ESA Gaia, R van der Marel M Fardal J Sahlmann, Mark Fardal, Patel G Besla University of Arizona R, van der Marel

Magnetic north isn’t even close to where it used to be

Magnetic north has recently been moving north from Canada to Russia in a cold hurry. It's moving about 33 miles a year instead of the usual 7 miles. World navigation models had to updated ahead of schedule to catch up with it. None If you're reading this as you travel the arctic, odds are you're probably already a bit confused. Your compass has been, well, strange, lately. That's because magnetic north has been moving. Quickly. It's never been stationary, but recently it's been moving around 4...
Tags: Science, Russia, Earth, Nature, Canada, Military, Aircraft, Geology, Innovation, European Space Agency, Siberia, Mars, North Pole, Arctic Ocean, Planet, American Geophysical Union

Hubble Telescope Discovers 'Living Fossil' Galaxy in Our Milky Way's Backyard

Our Milky Way galaxy has another neighbor. The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a dwarf galaxy in our own cosmic backyard, a mere 30 million light-years from the Milky Way. (That may sound like a far piece, but remember: the observable universe is a whopping 93 billion light-years across.) The find was fortuitous. An international team of astronomers was using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument to study white dwarfs -- superdense stellar corpses -- in the globular cluster...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Italy, European Space Agency, Milky Way, Hubble Space Telescope, Mike Wall, NGC, Facebook Originally, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, ESA Hubble NASA, Karl Tate, Bedin, Hubble Telescope Discovers Living Fossil Galaxy, L R Bedin

Israel Aerospace, Germany's OHB parter in European moon mission

State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries on Tuesday said it has partnered with Germany's OHB System for a European Space Agency moon mission, which includes developing a lunar lander. Work with the European agency will be managed by OHB, while Israel Aerospace (IAI) will deliver the moon lander, the company said. It did not disclose financial details, although the agreement could be worth tens of millions of dollars, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.
Tags: Science, Germany, European Space Agency, Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel Aerospace Germany, Israel Aerospace IAI

Silent Mars Rover Opportunity Marks 15 Years on Red Planet in Bittersweet Anniversary

NASA's Opportunity rover has now been on Mars for 15 years, but the milestone is a bittersweet one. Opportunity touched down on the night of Jan. 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit, landed on a different patch of Red Planet ground. Both solar-powered rovers embarked on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity -- and both delivered in spades, finding plenty of such evidence and continuing to roam long after their warranties expired. Spirit finally went silen...
Tags: Science, China, Russia, Nasa, European Space Agency, Mars, Red Planet, Facebook Originally, Gale Crater, Karl Tate, Red Planet Mike Wall

European Space Agency wants to start drilling on the Moon in an effort to find oxygen and water

The European Space Agency  (ESA) is hoping to start mining on the Moon by 2025. The ESA has signed a 12-month contract with the rocket maker ArianeGroup to study and prepare for the mission which aims to extract regolith, or Moon rock. Regolith covers the entire lunar surface to a depth of at least 12 feet, as it made up of a mix of clays, glass fragments, minerals and chemical compounds like iron oxide from which oxygen, water and fuel could be extracted. Many space agencies now believe space m...
Tags: Europe, Science, Esa, European Space Agency, European Space Agency ESA, Arianespace, David Parker, ArianeGroup, Space Applications Services, André Hubert Roussel CEO of ArianeGroup

European Space Agency wants to mine on the Moon by 2025

The European Space Agency (ESA) is hoping to start mining on the Moon by 2025. The ESA has signed a 12 month contract with the rocket maker ArianeGroup to study and prepare for the mission which aims to extract regolith, or Moon rock. Regolith covers the entire lunar surface to a depth of at least 12 feet, as it made up of a mix of  clays, glass fragments, minerals and chemical compounds like iron oxide from which oxygen, water and fuel could be extracted. Many space agencies now believe space m...
Tags: Europe, Science, Esa, European Space Agency, European Space Agency ESA, Arianespace, David Parker, ArianeGroup, Space Applications Services, André Hubert Roussel CEO of ArianeGroup

Plants grown on Moon for first time paving way for lunar base

Plants have sprouted on the Moon for the first time in a mini biosphere paving the way for bases which produce their own food and air. Pictures of the first tiny green shoots of cotton were released by researchers at the Advanced Technology Research Institute at Chongqing University who are running the experiment on board the Chang'e-4 lunar lander. The Chinese space agency spacecraft became the first to make a soft landing on the far side of the Moon earlier this month. Plants and flowers h...
Tags: Science, China, Earth, International Space Station, Moon, European Space Agency, Chang, International Space Station ISS, Christopher Jones, Sweden Germany, Yutu, Tiangong, China National Space Administration, People 's Daily, Chongqing University, Von KArmAn Crater

Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad.

Antarctica -- home to the greatest ice sheets on Earth -- isn't just melting significantly faster than it was decades ago. Great masses of ice that scientists once presumed were largely immune to melting are losing ample ice into the sea.  In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers illustrate that the ice-clad continent is losing more than six times as much ice as it was in the 1980s. A "major contributor," the scientists emphasiz...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Virgin Galactic, Antarctica, European Space Agency, Manhattan, Columbia University, Greenland, Bell, Antarctic, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, East Antarctica, Willis, Antartica, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory

Antarctica’s once sleepy ice sheets have awoken. That's bad.

Antarctica — home to the greatest ice sheets on Earth — isn't just melting significantly faster than it was decades ago. Great masses of ice that scientists once presumed were largely immune to melting, are losing ample ice into the sea.  In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers illustrate that the ice-clad continent is losing more than six times as much ice as it was in the 1980s. A "major contributor," the scientists emphasiz...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Virgin Galactic, Netherlands, Antarctica, European Space Agency, Manhattan, Columbia University, Greenland, Bell, South Pole, Antarctic, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, East Antarctica, Willis

This Huge Black Hole Is Spinning at Half the Speed of Light!

The crumbs left over from a supermassive black hole's recent meal have allowed scientists to calculate the monster's rotation rate, and the results are mind-boggling. The huge black hole, known as ASASSN-14li, is spinning at least 50 percent the speed of light, research team members said. "This black hole's event horizon is about 300 times bigger than the Earth," study co-author Ron Remillard, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. (The event hori...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Mit, European Space Agency, Seattle, Weiss, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Mike Wall, Chandra, Chandra X Ray Observatory, Time Warps, Facebook Originally, American Astronomical Society AAS, Remillard, Dheeraj Pasham

Ancient stars crystalise into twinkling diamond-like spheres, scientists show for first time

Peer up into the constellation Pisces through a telescope and a faint ball of light can be seen, named van Maanen's Star, after the Dutch-American who first spotted it in 1917. The twinkling orb may look similar to the other fiery stars around it, but it is actually a perfect sphere of crystal. For the first time scientists have found evidence that ancient dying stars, known as white dwarfs, transform into diamond-like globes which still burn intensely enough to glow brightly in the sky. And...
Tags: Science, Earth, European Space Agency, University of Warwick, Sirius, Gaïa, University of Warwick s Department of Physics, Maanen, Van Maanen, Pier Emmanuel Tremblay

OSIRIS-REx probe goes into close orbit around asteroid Bennu and sets a record

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft today maneuvered into an orbit that takes it within 4,000 feet of the surface of Bennu, a diamond-shaped asteroid that’s 70 million miles from Earth. The orbit sets a record for interplanetary travel. The quarter-mile-wide asteroid is now the smallest body ever orbited by a spacecraft, and the spacecraft is tracing the closest sustained orbit around a celestial body. Bennu beat out Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the 2.5-mile-wide comet that the European Space Agenc...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Rosetta, European Space Agency, Churyumov Gerasimenko, Bennu

Scientists Use Spinning Neutron Stars to Calibrate Atomic Clocks

The European Space Agency is synching up atomic clocks with distant, rapidly spinning neutron stars, called pulsars, according to a release. Read more...
Tags: Space, Science, Time, Clocks, European Space Agency, Pulsars, Atomic Clocks

Soyuz Crew Returns to Earth After a Memorable 6 Months in Space

NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, German astronaut Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev safely touched down on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan at 12:02 a.m. EST (0502 GMT), one minute ahead of schedule. "The Soyuz MS-09 stuck the landing on the eve of the 50th anniversary of humankind’s first voyage to the moon," NASA TV commentator Rob Navias said during a live webcast of the landing, referring to the Apollo 8 mission that launched on Dec. 21...
Tags: Science, Nasa, European Space Agency, Kazakhstan, Alexander Gerst, Serena Auñón, Sergey Prokopyev, Rob Navias

3 astronauts return from International Space Station

MOSCOW (AP) — Three astronauts returned to Earth Thursday after more than six months aboard the International Space Station. A Russian Soyuz capsule with NASA’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergey Prokopyev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst, of the European Space Agency, landed on the snow-covered steppes in Kazakhstan, about 140 kilometers (87 miles) southeast of the […]
Tags: Science, News, Ap, Nasa, Earth, Nation, International Space Station, Moscow, European Space Agency, Kazakhstan, Alexander Gerst, Serena Auñón, Sergey Prokopyev

Alexa in space? Why free-floating AI friends are in our interplanetary future

This post is part of Science of Sci-Fi , Mashable's ongoing series dissecting the science (or lack of science) in our favorite sci-fi movies, TV shows, and books. Not many American nerds these days know about a golden age sci-fi writer called Edmond Hamilton. If they do, it's because of his Star Wars connections: Hamilton was the husband of Leigh Brackett, space opera queen and author of the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back; he also happened to be the first guy to use a "lase...
Tags: Google, Science, Germany, Siri, Nasa, Earth, International Space Station, European Space Agency, Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, Ibm, Watson, Airbus, Mars, Kevin Spacey, Kraftwerk

Scientists confirm the existence of 104 new exoplanets

Mexico, Dec. 6 (Notimex).- An international group of researchers discovered the existence of 60 new exoplanets, through the use of data from the K2 mission of NASA and Gaia of the European Space Agency (ESA). Among the new findings are two dozen planets in various systems, 18 of which are twice as small as the Earth, according to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ, for its acronym in English). Also, several of the discovered worlds are of Ultra Short Period (USP),that is,  they...
Tags: Science, Mexico, Nasa, Earth, European Space Agency, Livingston, USP, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan NAOJ, NOTIMEX, John Livingston

The Sun's Turbulent North Pole Looks Like a Spooky Vortex in This Composite Image

Today, may we recommend a visit to the north pole of the sun? Even with satellite footage, our view of the sun is pretty much limited to the solar disc — the circular profile of the sun that we can see plainly from Earth. The northern and southern poles of our closest star have never been directly observed, but scientists at the European Space Agency have made a habit of creating daily composite images of the sun's north pole using some clever time-lapse photography.
Tags: Science, European Space Agency

Five planned missions to Mars

Space agencies around the world are set to explore the red planet, while Elon Musk has even grander plansLast week, Nasa successfully landed its InSight probe on Mars, as part of a two-year mission to study the planet’s deep interior. Nasa is also planning a rover mission for 2020, to investigate signs of life and collect data for future expeditions. Continue reading...
Tags: Europe, Space, Spacex, Elon Musk, Science, Technology, China, Russia, World news, Nasa, Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, United Arab Emirates, European Space Agency, Mars

Rolling, hopping robots explore Earthly analogs of distant planets

Before we send any planet-trotting robot to explore the landscape of Mars or Venus, we need to test it here on Earth. Two such robotic platforms being developed for future missions are undergoing testing at European Space Agency facilities: one that rolls, and one that hops. The rolling one is actually on the books to head to the Red Planet as part of the ESA’s Mars 2020 program. It’s just wrapped a week of testing in the Spanish desert, just one of many Mars analogs space programs use. It lo...
Tags: Startups, Gadgets, Europe, Space, Science, Hardware, Nasa, Earth, Esa, Chile, European Space Agency, Mars, Robotics, Atacama, Eth Zurich, Charlie

Here's how to bring the majesty and mystery of space to your phone

This is Ode To... , a weekly column where we share the stuff we're really into in hopes that you'll be really into it, too. Space is vast — infinite, even — and mysterious and mesmerizing. And guess what? It's never been easier to bring all of the amazing things about space right to your phone.  This may seem a bit counterintuitive. After all, space is never-ending, and your phone is, comparatively speaking, quite small. But current phone screens are like mini-HD TVs, and the bre...
Tags: Elon Musk, Science, Youtube, America, Nasa, International Space Station, European Space Agency, Mars, Saturn, Iss, Cassini, Nick Hague, Zarya Module

Watch a rocket launch from point of view of the International Space Station

Decades ago, a rocket launch was an incredibly special event, but these days, companies and space agencies around the world are sending spacecraft into the skies on such a regular basis that it can seem almost mundane. A new video of a routine resupply launch to the International Space Station brings some of the magic back by showing what the ISS crew saw as the space station passed over the rocket as it sped into space. The video, which was posted by the European Space Agency, shows the Progre...
Tags: Science, Earth, International Space Station, European Space Agency, Iss

These Precision Parts 3D-Printed From Fake Moon Dust Bring Us One Step Closer to Living on Mars

Mars is lacking in the vast supply of natural resources we’ve come to rely on here on Earth, and astronauts attempting to colonize, or even just visit, the red planet can only bring a limited supply of materials with them. Learning to make do with what Mars has to offer is one of the biggest challenges of visiting our…Read more...
Tags: Space, Science, Research, Earth, Esa, 3d Printing, European Space Agency, Mars, The moon

Astronauts to celebrate Thanksgiving on the International Space Station

Some astronauts are taking the day off to celebrate Thanksgiving while they orbit Earth on the International Space Station. The three members of Expedition 57 from Russia, Germany and the U.S. will celebrate all together after food prepared specially for the occasion was sent to them last weekend, according to a NASA blogpost. Alexander Gerst from the European Space Agency and Serena Aunon Chancellor, a NASA flight engineer, will have the day off while their Russian colleague, Sergey Prokopyev...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, International Space Station, European Space Agency, Russia Germany, Alexander Gerst, Serena Auñón, Sergey Prokopyev

Museum of Natural History invites the public to know Mars

Mexico, Nov. 23 (Notimex) .- The MMinistry of the Environment (Sedema, for its acronym in Spanish) of Mexico City opened two temporary exhibitions at the Natural History Museum: "A lo Marciano, un vistazo al planeta rojo", inspired by the Mars series, by National Geographic, and "Traces and tracks, tracks of life in nature". The first exhibition is inspired by the work published in 1952 by Isaac Asimov, "A lo marciano" (The Martian Way), which shows a selection of high resolution images of the s...
Tags: Science, Mexico, Mexico City, European Space Agency, Mars, Museum of Natural History, Isaac Asimov, Marciano, Stephen Petranek, Earth Mars, Gerhard Neukum