Peering deep into the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy using infrared vision, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a rich tapestry of more than half a million stars. Except for a few blue foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way’s nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest star cluster in […]
Ilustration of the Hitomi x-ray astronomy satellite, launched by JAXA Feb. 17 with instruments from NASA and other space agencies. Credit: JAXA/Akihiro Ikeshita WASHINGTON — A senior official with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said March 29 that he still believed it was possible to restore control of the Hitomi astronomy satellite, but that […]
A new paper describes how laser beams could disrupt measurements of Earth’s orbit around the sun, potentially deceiving inquisitive aliens. Here, a 22W laser used for adaptive optics shines from the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl A simple laser beam could disrupt aliens’ observations of Earth, making it look like there’s nobody […]
Lunar EVA astronaut Buzz Aldrin lends his persona to a visitors center attraction at Kennedy Space Center, by means of OnSight, a VR platform by Microsoft and JPL, which is used in actual rover navigation and science tasking. credit : NASA JPL Watch more ► Shows Skylon SABRE – A True Space Plane | Video […]
A Russian Soyuz rocket and its unmanned Progress 63P supply ship stand atop their launchpad at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan ahead of a March 31, 2016 launch to the International Space Station. The Progress vehicle is carrying 3 tons of supplies for the station. Credit: RSC Energia Update for 1:30 pm ET: Russia’s Progress 63P cargo […]
Operations image of the week: Teams at ESA’s mission control in intensive simulation training for Sentinel-1B liftoff To source
Decades of searching in the Milky Way’s nearby ‘twin’ galaxy Andromeda have finally paid off, with the discovery of an elusive breed of stellar corpse, a neutron star, by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. To source
This wide angle of the Southern Cross was captured by Greg Redfern while aboard the Azamara Quest while she was underway in the Coral Sea-Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Greg Redfern Like many astrophotographers, Greg Redfern takes images of the night sky. But his unique view, from a ship on the ocean, lends a particular style […]
The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array in Hat Creek, California is now searching 20,000 red dwarf stars for signs of intelligent life. Credit: Seth Shostak, SETI Institute The search for intelligent aliens has expanded to include thousands of star systems very different from that of Earth. Scientists with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute […]
A frozen nitrogen lake on Pluto suggests that liquids may have once flowed across the dwarf planet’s surface. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has spotted evidence that liquids might have once flowed across the dwarf planet that stole everyone’s heart. The evidence comes in the form of a frozen lake that researchers think once […]
Thursday morning, March 31, marked the second last quarter moon in this month, perhaps a “blue” last quarter. Credit: Starry Night Software As the moon moves around Earth in its monthly orbit, there are four points at which it is in exact geometry with the sun and Earth: new moon, first quarter, full moon, and […]
This ALMA image shows the disk around the young star TW Hydrae. Image released March 31, 2016. Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Scientists may have just snapped baby photos of an alien Earth. The planet-forming disk around a nearby sunlike star called TW Hydrae sports a gap at about the […]
Featuring hot topics at the Aeronautical Technology Directorate, our quarterly magazine “FLIGHT PATH” introduces JAXA’s R&D activities in aeronautical field with plain articles.(English version issued twice a year in March and October) Latest issue: No.11/12 | 2016 MARCH Main contents Feature 1The Next Generation Aeronautical Innovation Hub Center Facilitating collaboration with a wide variety of […]