Space and astronomy news
It’s been a long and winding road getting the James Webb Space Telescope from concept to reality. And finally, after decades of planning, work, delays, and cost overruns, the next generation of space telescopes is finally ready to launch. But even now, as the telescope might be secretly traveling by cargo ship to the European …
Every two years, Mars enters what is known as a “Solar Conjunction,” where its orbit takes it behind the Sun relative to Earth. During these periods, the hot plasma regularly expelled by the Sun’s corona can cause interference with radio signals transmitted between Earth and Mars. To avoid signal corruption and the unexpected behaviors that …
Continue reading “Communication With Mars is About to Become Impossible (for two Weeks)”
Mars and water. Those words can trigger an avalanche of speculation, evidence, hypotheses, and theories. Mars has some water now, but it’s frozen, and most of it’s buried. There’s only a tiny bit of water vapour in the atmosphere. Evidence shows that it was much wetter in the past. In its ancient past, the planet …
Even meteorologists who forecast the weather on Earth admit that they can’t always accurately predict the weather at a specific location on our planet any given time. And so, attempting to forecast the atmospheric conditions on another world can be downright impossible. But a new study suggests that an oft-used forecasting technique on Earth can …
Continue reading “Accurately Forecasting the Weather on Mars and Titan”
The ESA just finished testing the drill that will allow the Rosalind Franklin rover to search for signs of life beneath the surface of Mars!
Three months after touching down on the Martian surface, China’s Zhurong rover has completed its primary mission and is still going strong.
The search for Martian life has been ongoing for decades. Various landers and rovers have searched for biosignatures or other hints that life existed either currently or in the past on the Red Planet. But so far, results have been inconclusive. That might be about to change, though, with a slew of missions planned to …
Continue reading “The Best Evidence for Life on Mars Might be Found on its Moons”
The Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has now completed its 12th flight, where it acted as a scout, looking ahead for dangerous terrain for it’s partner in crime, the Perseverance rover.
The new Russian module temporarily kicked the ISS out of position, causing a delay for Boeing’s Starliner mission.
A new survey conducted by the Royal Astronomical Society has shown that the fields of astronomy and geophysics also suffer from a culture of bullying and harassment