Which camp are you in: volcanoes? Or asteroids?
When it comes to the extinction of the dinosaurs, science has whittled it down to those two possibilities. The asteroid strike has been the leading candidate for quite some time now, but those darn volcanoes refuse to stand down.
A new study is presenting even more evidence that it was the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, and not volcanoes.
Continue reading “The Evidence is Leaning More and More Towards an Asteroid Ending the Dinosaurs”
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #647.
Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming?
Continue reading “Betelgeuse is Continuing to Dim! It’s Down to 1.506 Magnitude”Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)
Allen Versfeld (https://www.urban-astronomer.com/ / @uastronomer)
Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter)
Michael Rodruck (@michaelrodruck)
This week we welcome Dr. Kenneth Carpenter to the Weekly Space Hangout.
Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: January 22, 2019 – Dr. Kenneth Carpenter of HST and WFIRST”
Never seen Neptune? It’s time you should, and this weekend offers a fine time to try, as the faintest planet in the solar system approaches the brightest in the dusk sky, for a splendid conjunction of the pair.
Continue reading “A Twilight Tryst: Venus Meets Neptune in the Dusk Sky”
The United States Space Force has given us a look at their new uniforms, and critics are savaging them on Twitter and elsewhere. That’s because the new uniforms are camouflage.
Continue reading “Space Force Uniforms are Perfectly Camouflaged for a Forest Moon”
For fans and enthusiasts of space exploration, the name Kevin Gill ought to be a familiar one. As a software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who specializes in data visualization and analysis, he has a long history of bringing space exploration to life through imagery. Among his most recent offerings is a very interesting pic taken by the Curiosity rover early in its mission.
Continue reading “Curiosity Looked up and Saw Phobos During the Daytime”
The world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope is officially open for business according to Xinhua, China’s official state-run media. The FAST Radio Telescope saw fist light in 2016 but has been undergoing testing and commissioning since then. FAST stands for Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope.
Continue reading “China’s 500-Meter FAST Radio Telescope is Now Operational”
NASA and the NOAA just announced that 2019 was the second hottest year on record. It barely edged out 2016, the previous warmest year. And both 2019 and 2016 are part of the global warming trend: the last five years have been the warmest five years on record. And the last decade was the warmest decade.
Continue reading “According to NASA, 2019 Was the Second Hottest Year on Record”
At Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, during the morning hours this past Sunday (Jan, 19th), SpaceX conducted the final uncrewed test of their Crew Dragon space capsule. This was the all-important in-flight abort test, the purpose of which was to validate the crew capsule’s escape capabilities in the event of an unexpected emergency during launch.
The event, which was live-streamed by NASA TV, was a complete success and saw the Crew Dragon successfully separate from its Falcon 9 launcher before being retrieved at sea. With this test complete, NASA and SpaceX will be moving forward with the first crewed mission. Known as Crew Demo-2, this mission will see two astronauts launched aboard the Crew Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.
Continue reading “SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule Nails In-Flight Abort Test! Next Stop, the ISS!”