Even More Planets Were Hiding in Kepler’s Fields
Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets - almost half of…
NASA is Testing Shape Memory Alloy Wheels
Rovers on alien worlds need to be built of strong stuff. The dry rugged terrain can be punishing on the…
Astronomers Release a Huge Survey of Exocomet Belts
The study of exoplanets is challenging enough with the immense distances and glare from the host start but astronomers have…
Life Would Struggle to Survive Near Wolf 359
Red dwarfs always make me think of the classic British TV science comedy show in the 90’s that was named…
Several Double Planetary Disks Found
If you want to know what the newly forming Solar System looked like, study planetary disks around other stars. Like…
Getting To Mars Quickly With Nuclear Electric Propulsion
A spacecraft takes between about seven and nine months to reach Mars. The time depends on the spacecraft and the…
A Fast Radio Burst Came From an Old, Dead Galaxy
Astronomers still aren't sure about the source of fast radio bursts, but they appear to come from newly formed neutron…
Tracing the Big Ideas that Led to Webb
At the end of large engineering projects, the design team is typically asked to develop a document, in some cases…
Rubin Will Find Millions of Supernovae
The discovery of a few thousand type 1a supernovae over the last few decades has helped measure the expansion of…
Black Hole Jets Seen Forming in Real-Time
A short time ago, astronomers observed a distant supermassive black hole (SMBH) located in a galaxy 270 million light-years away…