In a room filled with expansive computer screens and blinking lights at NASA’s Johnson Space Centerin Houston, scientists work daily shifts to monitor space weather conditions for astronauts on the space station. Known as space environment officers, they’re the lifeguards of... Continue Reading →
How can a planet be "hotter than hot?" The answer is when heavy metals are detected escaping from the planet's atmosphere, instead of condensing into clouds. Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal magnesium and iron gas streaming from the... Continue Reading →
In brush strokes of interstellar dust and glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape is painted across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Composed with three different telescopes and about 90 hours... Continue Reading →
ESA’s Aeolus satellite, which carries the world’s first space Doppler wind lidar, has been delivering high-quality global measurements of Earth’s wind since it was launched almost a year ago. However, part of the instrument, the laser transmitter, has been slowly... Continue Reading →
Artemis, named after the twin sister of Apollo who is also the Goddess of the Moon and the hunt, encompasses all of our efforts to return humans to the Moon – which will prepare us and propel us on to... Continue Reading →
Earth isn't the only place that experiences quakes: Both the Moon and Mars have them as well. NASA sent the first seismometer to the Moon 50 years ago, during the Apollo 11 mission; the agency's InSight lander brought the first... Continue Reading →
The universe 13,000 million years ago was very different from the universe we know today. It is understood that stars were forming at a very rapid rate, forming the first dwarf galaxies, whose mergers gave rise to the more massive... Continue Reading →
Why is the Cigar Galaxy billowing red smoke? M82, as this starburst galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust, however. Evidence indicates that this gas and dust is being... Continue Reading →
The solar cycle is a rhythmic waxing and waning of the number of sunspots on the Sun. There are about 11 years between the times when the sunspot number is the greatest. We now know that the solar cycle is... Continue Reading →
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