Blue Origin has achieved an important milestone with its New Glenn NG-1 rocket, successfully completing a 24-second hotfire of the rocket’s BE-4 engines in preparation for an expected test flight in the coming days.
Continue reading “New Glenn Completes a Hotfire Test. Next… Flight?”Astronomers Find a Black Hole Tipped Over on its Side

Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole churning away at its core. In most cases, these black holes spin in concert with their galaxy, like the central hub of a cosmic wagon wheel. But on December 18, 2024, NASA researchers announced they had discovered a galaxy whose black hole appears to have been turned on its side, spinning out of alignment with its host galaxy.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a Black Hole Tipped Over on its Side”Space Telescopes Could See a Second Life With a Servicing Mission
Telescopes in space have a huge advantage over those on the ground: they can see the universe more clearly. The Earth’s atmosphere, weather conditions, and low-flying satellites don’t obscure their view. But space telescopes have a disadvantage too. They can’t be repaired, at least not since NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.
But next-generation telescopes are being planned with robotic servicing missions in mind. And not just in low earth orbit, where the Hubble Space Telescope received repairs and upgrades five times during its lifespan from space shuttle crews. Today’s engineers are preparing for ways to repair telescopes in deep space, including at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2.
Continue reading “Space Telescopes Could See a Second Life With a Servicing Mission”Astronomers Find a 3 Million Year Old Planet

Astronomers have just found one of the youngest planets ever. At only 3 million years old, planet TIDYE-1b (also known as IRAS 04125+2902 b) is practically in its infancy. By comparison, Earth is 4.5 billion years old: that’s 1500 times older. The discovery of a planet this young can teach scientists a lot about the early stages of planet formation, and the peculiarities of this particular one have scientists re-evaluating their models of planetary birth.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a 3 Million Year Old Planet”Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Primordial Black Holes Speeding Through the Solar System
Cosmologists have long hypothesized that the conditions of the early universe could have caused the formation of black holes not long after the Big Bang. These ‘primordial black holes’ have a much wider mass range than those that formed in the later universe from the death of stars, with some even condensed to the width of a single atom.
Continue reading “Gravitational Wave Observatories Could Detect Primordial Black Holes Speeding Through the Solar System”Plate Tectonics Might Only Occur on 0.003% of Planets. That Makes Earth Very Special Indeed.
Plate tectonics, oceans, and continents might just be the secret ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological features are rare elsewhere in the universe, then perhaps that explains why we haven’t yet discovered intelligent alien life. New research from American and Swiss Earth scientists suggests that these ingredients represent missing variables in the famous Drake equation, devised more than half a century ago to estimate the chances of finding advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Including these new variables could completely rewrite the probability of detecting intelligent life in the Milky Way.
Continue reading “Plate Tectonics Might Only Occur on 0.003% of Planets. That Makes Earth Very Special Indeed.”Webb is an Amazing Supernova Hunter

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just increased the number of known distant supernovae by tenfold. This rapid expansion of astronomers’ catalog of supernovae is extremely valuable, not least because it improves the reliability of measurements for the expansion of the universe.
Continue reading “Webb is an Amazing Supernova Hunter”Carbon is Surprisingly Abundant in an Early Galaxy

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again found evidence that the early universe was a far more complex place than we thought. This time, it has detected the signature of carbon atoms present in a galaxy that formed just 350 million years after the Big Bang – one of the earliest galaxies ever observed.
Continue reading “Carbon is Surprisingly Abundant in an Early Galaxy”Hubble Pauses its Science Again

The Hubble Space Telescope has been shut down temporarily after one of its gyroscopes sent faulty telemetry readings back to Earth in late May. The venerable space-based observatory, which has been responsible for some of the most remarkable scientific advances of the last three decades, and stunning astrophotography that became a cultural mainstay, is in its thirty-fourth year of operation.
Continue reading “Hubble Pauses its Science Again”Fish are Adapting to Weightlessness on the Chinese Space Station
Four zebrafish are alive and well after nearly a month in space aboard China’s Tiangong space station. As part of an experiment testing the development of vertebrates in microgravity, the fish live and swim within a small habitat aboard the station.
Continue reading “Fish are Adapting to Weightlessness on the Chinese Space Station”