New Horizons, the only spacecraft to ever visit Pluto, has now reached a new landmark at the edge of our planetary system.
In 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first robotic explorer ever to visit the the dwarf planet Pluto, and its family of five moons.
On April 17, at 8:42 pm EDT, New Horizons became just the fifth spacecraft to travel more than 50 times further from the Sun than the Earth. In order to mark the occasion, mission controllers took a view around another robotic explorer in the void — Voyager 1.
The super-Earth GJ 740 b is no place to call home.
Red dwarf stars are significantly cooler than our own sun, with surface temperatures between 2,100 and 3,400 degrees Celsius (3,860–6,200 Fahrenheit) — roughly 2,000 C cooler than our parent star. These diminutive, ruddy stars are also smaller than our sun, containing between eight and 45 percent as much mass as the Sun.
Sitting roughly 36 light years from Earth, the GJ 740 system could provide astronomers an intriguing target in the study of planets around alien worlds.
Radial, Dude!
Exoplanets with oxygen might be a sign of life — or not. Here’s a look at how worlds can build oxygen-rich atmospheres without life.
The discovery of life on another world would be a monumental moment in the history of human civilization. The most likely way we will, one day, find alien life will be discovering chemical markers of life in the atmosphere of planets orbiting distant stars.
One of these markers is oxygen, which currently makes up a little over 20 percent of the atmosphere of our own world. However, our own world held onto relatively little oxygen until…
Why Explore Mars? The Red Planet has beckoned to the human race since we first looked up at the night sky.
Long ago, our distant ancestors looked up at the night sky as it hovered, enticingly, over the Serengeti Plain. The mysterious lights scattered amongst the darkness beckoned to the most curious among them.
A few of these lights were special — they seemed to wander among the other, seemingly-stationary lights. One of these planets was also unique due to its color — a shocking blood red.
By the time science first took hold around ancient Greece 2600 years ago…
Giant radio pulses from pulsars are odder — and even more giant than we thought. Ho ho ho.
Pulsars are one of the more intriguing objects in the sky, radiating regular flashes of electromagnetic energy, which can (sometimes) be seen from Earth. Flashing with astonishing regularity, these objects are stellar corpses of massive stars that met their demise in supernovae. When beams of energy are aligned just right, they can be seen from Earth as regular pulses of light.
Occasionally, pulsars produce unpredictable giant radio pulses (GRPs) — short-lived bursts of energy far more powerful than the flashes coming from…
A pair of quasar pairs in the ancient Universe give us a look at the future of our own galaxy.
Two quasar pairs seen in the early Universe are the oldest, most-distant bodies objects of their kind yet seen in the Cosmos.
Quasars are extremely energetic galaxies, powered by highly-active supermassive black holes near their centers. Matter falling into the behemoth void in the galactic core radiates vast amounts of energy out to space, forming a quasar. While this process is active, these supermassive black holes can outshine entire galaxies.
The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a new project being developed by Russia and China, could be humanity’s first permanent home on the Moon.
By Chukwuemeka Aloysius Anigbogu and James Maynard
The Russian space agency Roscosmos and China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) recently agreed to establish lunar outposts on, and in orbit around, the Moon. This announcement comes as Russia prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of Yuri’s Night — the beginning of human spaceflight.
Roscosmos originated in 1991 from the dissolved soviet space program. The Soviet space agency accomplished a number of firsts, including launching the first satellite, as…
X-rays from Uranus are spotted for the first time. No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.
Far from the Sun, near the outer limits of our solar system, the ice giant Uranus slowly orbits its distant parent star. For the first time, astronomers have seen X-rays emanating from this distant world.
The Chandra X-ray observatory, launched in 1999, examines the Universe in X-rays, highly-energetic wavelengths of electromagnetic energy most commonly associated with diagnosing broken bones.
“NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a telescope specially designed to detect X-ray emission from very hot regions of the Universe such as exploded stars, clusters…
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope — due to become one of the great planet-hunting telescopes — might find 100,000 exoplanets among the stars.
Due for launch in the mid-2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is destined to become one of the great planet-hunting telescopes. Although the main mirror at the heart of the Roman Telescope is no larger than the one in the Hubble Space Telescope, the Roman mirror is just 25 percent as massive as its predecessor. …
The oceans of Enceladus could be more like the oceans of Earth than we believed — but is there life?
Orbiting around Saturn, the icy moon Enceladus makes an intriguing target for astronomers and planetary scientists. Like Jupiter’s moon Europa, Enceladus is one of the water worlds of our solar system where we may, one day, find primitive life.
First discovered by legendary astronomer William Herschel in 1789, Enceladus is about as wide across as the state of Arizona. In 2014, the Cassini spacecraft exploring the Saturnian system found evidence of a vast subsurface ocean encompassing this frozen moon. Covering…
James Maynard
Writing about space since I was 10, still not Carl Sagan. Weekly video show, podcast, comics, more: www.thecosmiccompanion.net
