Blue Origin test launch marks step towards ‘sustainable space economy’
Aerospace company Blue Origin is expected to hold an uncrewed test flight of its reusable New Shepard spacecraft on Thursday.
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Astrophysics students lead upgrades to Green Bank Telescope
A team of WVU astrophysics students helped create a new radio camera for the Green Bank Telescope, the first of its kind in the U.S.
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Making space weather forecasts faster and better
To improve the ability to forecast space weather, a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including Professor Boris Kramer at the University of California San Diego, received $3.1 million from the National Science Foundation. The researchers, led by Professor Richard Linares at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will also work on speeding up the forecasting abilities that are currently available.
What it takes to shoot a laser on Mars
For the better part of a decade, an extraordinary tool aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover has been investigating the chemical building blocks of life and making exciting discoveries about Mars’ habitability.
Read moreBreakthrough telescope in Chile renamed for benefactor Cornell alum
The powerful new telescope being built for an exceptional high-elevation site in Chile by a consortium of U.S., German and Canadian academic institutions, led by Cornell University, has a new name: the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST).
Read moreCan life survive a star’s death? Webb telescope can reveal the answer
When stars like our sun die, all that remains is an exposed core – a white dwarf. A planet orbiting a white dwarf presents a promising opportunity to determine if life can survive the death of its star, according to Cornell University researchers.
Read moreAncient ocean, meteorites could have seeded life in Venusian clouds
An international team of researchers has discovered the presence of the chemical compound phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus —
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What could desert rocks tell us about life on Mars?
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., September 3, 2020—The dark, hard coating found on rocks and cliff faces in the desert Southwest could
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Life after landing on Mars
When NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars in February after its seven-month-long journey, the mission will only just be beginning.
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Galaxy Simulations Could Help Reveal Origins of Milky Way
Rutgers astronomers have produced the most advanced galaxy simulations of their kind, which could help reveal the origins of the Milky Way and dozens of small neighboring dwarf galaxies. Their research also could aid the decades-old search for dark matter, which fills an estimated 27 percent of the universe. And the computer simulations of “ultra-faint” dwarf galaxies could help shed light on how the first stars formed in the universe.
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Searching Mars for signatures of life
Today, Mars is an arid, dusty, and frigid landscape with an average temperature of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit—inhospitable to life as we know it. But it wasn’t always that way.
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The Cold Case of Carbon Monoxide
Fifty years ago, astronomers discovered carbon monoxide in space. It allowed us to see dark regions of the universe, and helped us understand it more clearly.