NASA Reveals 5 Million Images of Gravity Waves Rippling Through Earth’s Sky

NASA’s AWE mission just released millions of gravity wave images from space, unveiling atmospheric forces that ripple through the sky and affect our tech on Earth. It’s a whole new window into space weather.

After completing its 3,000th orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) has released its first set of scientific data. 

This milestone marks a major step in studying how subtle changes in Earth’s upper atmosphere can lead to disturbances, and how those disturbances can affect technologies like satellites, communications systems, and GPS on Earth and in space.

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Curiosity rover cracked open a rock and may have settled the 'life on Mars' debate

Imagine taking a leisurely Sunday drive, and you accidentally smash something on the road that turns out to be an unprecedented scientific revelation. Well, that’s exactly what happened to NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover when it struck yellow sulfur on the Red Planet.


While working its usual Martian shift, the rover stumbled upon, rather drove over, a rock and cracked it wide open, revealing a sight never before seen on Mars – a dazzling display of yellow sulfur crystals.

This unexpected discovery was relayed to a team of astounded scientists, including Ashwin Vasavada, the Curiosity’s project scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

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Solar System Facts

Our solar system includes the Sun, eight planets, five officially named dwarf planets, hundreds of moons, and thousands of asteroids and comets. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with two major arms, and two minor arms. Our Sun is in a small, partial arm of the Milky Way called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms. Our solar system orbits the center of the galaxy at about 515,000 mph (828,000 kph). It takes about 230 million years to complete one orbit around the galactic center.

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SpaceX Starship Flight 8 launch: Live updates

SpaceX's Starship megarocket is the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, and the giant booster that will launch the moon lander for NASA's Artemis 3 mission that aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2027.

The next Starship launch by SpaceX will be Starship Flight 8 on Friday, Feb. 28. at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT). 

It will be the second flight of a new version of the Ship and test new enhancements to the Super Heavy Booster while flying a similar profile to that of Flight 5 on Oct. 13, which saw the successful first landing and capture of the Super Heavy booster. It is also expected to include a relight of the Ship engines, test reentry gear for Ship in space and mark the first deployment of simulated Starlink satellites.  READ MORE...

China's New Solar Array

Chinese scientists have announced a plan to build an enormous, 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) wide solar power station in space that will beam continuous energy back to Earth via microwaves.


The project, which will see its components lofted to a geostationary orbit above Earth using super-heavy rockets, has been dubbed "another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth."


The Three Gorges Dam, located in the middle of the Yangtze river in central China, is the world's largest hydropower project and generates 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. According to one NASA scientist, the dam is so large that, if completely filled, the mass of the water contained within would lengthen Earth's days by 0.06 microseconds.     READ MORE...

Far away Planet Shows Signs of Life

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has reportedly discovered possible evidence of a sign of life on a faraway planet.


Life on Earth produces a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS) that has been discovered on the exoplanet named K2-18b.


The "bulk" of DMS in Earth's atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments, said University of Cambridge Prof. Nikku Madhusudhan who led the research to BBC News in 2023.

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Groundbreaking NASA Battery

In a groundbreaking development, NASA has unveiled a new solid-state sulfur selenium battery to revolutionize the aviation industry by replacing traditional gas-powered engines with electricity.


This innovative technology not only promises to significantly reduce harmful emissions but also opens up possibilities for faster and more efficient electric airplanes. In this article, we explore the implications of this breakthrough, its potential to transform air travel, and the challenges that lie ahead.


Air travel is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), commercial air travel in the United States alone accounts for 10% of transportation emissions and 3% of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions.     READ MORE...

Surprise Planet Discovery

New research reveals a fourth planet in the Kepler-51 system, altering our understanding of this unique system with three known ultra-low density “super-puff” planets.

Researchers utilized a range of telescopes, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, to detect unexpected transit timing variations that suggested the presence of an additional planet. This discovery adds complexity to the system’s dynamics and poses new questions about the formation and characteristics of these rare super-puff planets.

New Planet Discovered in Kepler-51 System
A team of researchers from Penn State and Osaka University has discovered that an unusual planetary system, known for its three ultra-low density “super-puff” planets, includes at least one more planet. While observing Kepler-51d, the third planet in the system, with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the team encountered a surprise: the planet transited its star two hours earlier than predicted by existing models.

To solve the mystery, the researchers analyzed both new and archival data from a range of space- and ground-based telescopes. Their investigation led to a compelling explanation: a previously undetected fourth planet, whose gravitational influence affects the orbits of the other planets in the system.

This groundbreaking discovery is detailed in a paper published on December 3 in the Astronomical Journal.     READ MORE...

Webb Telescope Confirms: Universe is Expanding

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Fresh corroboration of the perplexing observation that the universe is expanding more rapidly than expected has scientists pondering the cause - perhaps some unknown factor involving the mysterious cosmic components dark energy and dark matter.

Two years of data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have now validated the Hubble Space Telescope's earlier finding that the rate of the universe's expansion is faster - by about 8% - than would be expected based on what astrophysicists know of the initial conditions in the cosmos and its evolution over billions of years. The discrepancy is called the Hubble Tension.  READ MORE...

NASA: We Were Incorrect About the Universe

For decades, scientists have been grappling with what is considered to be the most fundamental question about the cosmos: How fast is our universe expanding?

The rate of expansion influences everything from how galaxies form to how they might one day drift apart.

Determining the expansion rate of the universe, a number called the “Hubble constant,” shapes our entire understanding of the cosmos, its age, and its ultimate fate.

“Hubble tension” expansion conundrum
Unfortunately, though many brilliant minds have dedicated their lives to finding the answer to this riddle, all who have tried thus far have failed, running repeatedly into a brick wall that has come to be known as the “Hubble tension.”

Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has been at the forefront of this debate. “With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility that we have misunderstood the universe,” Riess admitted.     READ MORE...

Lost Military Base Under Ice

NASA has shared an image of a defunct Cold War-era military base hidden deep underneath the frigid Greenland Ice Sheet.

As NASA cryospheric scientist Chad Greene flew over the Arctic plateau in April 2024, around 150 miles east of Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland, he snapped an image from the window of the Gulfstream III aircraft.

At the same time, the plane's radar instrument picked up a ping from deep below the ice, which turned out to be the remains of Camp Century, a Cold War base buried 100 feet below the surface of the frozen island.

"We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century," Alex Gardner, also a cryospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement.     READ MORE...

SpaceX's Dragon

Dragon successfully completed the orbital reboost of the International Space Station at approximately 12:50 p.m. ET (1750 GMT), Nov. 8. Read our full story.


SpaceX will boost the space station for the first time Friday (Nov. 8), as the company prepares to eventually kill the orbiting complex.


A Dragon cargo spacecraft docked to the International Space Station (ISS) will fire its engines for 12.5 minutes on Friday (Nov. 8), NASA officials said at a press conference Monday (Nov. 4). Other spacecraft have done this before, but it will be a first for a SpaceX capsule — and an important precursor to a bigger Dragon vehicle that will one day drive the ISS to its demise.     READ MORE...

A Laser Communications Link Billions of Kilometers Away

The recent success of NASA’s laser communication test represents a paradigm shift in space technology. Traditionally, space missions have relied on radio frequencies for communication. However, laser-based systems offer a data transmission capacity up to 100 times greater than conventional methods.


This advancement is not just about speed; it’s about expanding our capabilities in space exploration. With improved data transfer rates, future missions could:

• Send high-resolution images and videos back to Earth more quickly
• Enable real-time communication with spacecraft and rovers
• Facilitate more complex scientific experiments in deep space
• Support potential human missions to Mars and beyond

The implications of this breakthrough are far-reaching, potentially transforming our understanding of the cosmos. Just as the Hubble Space Telescope captured breathtaking views of distant galaxies, future space telescopes equipped with laser communication could transmit even more detailed observations, expanding our knowledge of the universe.        READ MORE...

Forging of Stars & Planets

New insights into the formation of gas streams that propel the growth of infant stars have been unveiled by astronomers with help from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, revealing deeper insights into how they feed on material from their surrounding disks.

The new findings are offering astronomers unprecedented new details about young stars and planets, and the processes that give rise to their formation and evolution over time.

The new research focused on investigations into the structure of gas flows in protoplanetary disks, which are the massive, dusty clouds of gas surrounding newly formed stars. Based on recent Webb telescope data, researchers involved were able to confirm the existence of a previously “hidden” mechanism that astronomers have long suspected to be behind what allows stars to gain mass as they grow.

Revealing a Magnetic Mystery
Detailed in a new paper in Nature Astronomy, the new research, led by scientists from the University of Arizona and supported by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, reveals that magnetic winds play a key role in transporting material that helps stars grow, along with shaping the mass present in their surrounding disk into a planetary system.     READ MORE...

NASA's InfraRed Delivery

NASA’s TBIRD (TeraByte InfraRed Delivery) demonstration and its host spacecraft — the PTD-3 (Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-3) — have completed their technology demonstration. 

The TBIRD payload spent the past two years breaking world records for the fastest satellite downlink from space using laser communications.

NASA’s PTD series leverages a common commercial spacecraft to provide a robust platform for effective testing of technologies with minimal redesign in between launches. 

After launch in May 2022 on the SpaceX Transporter 5 mission, the PTD-3 spacecraft entered low-Earth orbit and shortly after TBIRD began sending laser communications signals to an optical ground station in Table Mountain, California.     READ MORE...

NASA Launces Time Machine

The James Webb Space Telescope, also commonly called Webb, is the most significant advancement in human endeavor toward unraveling the mystery of the cosmos. This infrared observatory started in space with the support of NASA, ESA, and CSA; it can give a new perception of the evolution of the cosmos in the tendency to provide a glimpse of the Big Bang and its effect.

Webb is more than just a telescope – it is humanity’s most potent eye in the sky – providing the ability to observe the universe billions of years back and, hopefully, unlock the key to the cosmos’ evolution and provide answers to some of the most fundamental questions asked by humanity.

A mirror like no other: how Webb’s unprecedented design changes our understanding of the cosmos
Webb’s instrument, called the Mid-Infrared Instrument or MIRI, is designed to collect energy even from behind dust clouds and reveal the objects behind them. It has a mirror that is almost three times the size of the first space telescope, the Hubble, and is made of 18 hexagonal segments, collecting much more light than the earlier telescope, hence capturing the faint lights from the young universe.               READ MORE...

Galaxies in the Universe

An image from the Hubble Space Telescope showing hundreds of faraway galaxies. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri))



The Milky Way is just a speck in a universe filled with an untold number of galaxies. But if we had to take an educated guess, how many galaxies are in the universe?


That sounds like a simple question, but it's anything but. The first problem is that even with our most powerful telescopes, we can see only a tiny fraction of the universe.


"The observable universe is only that part of the universe from which the light has had time to reach us," astrophysicist Kai Noeske, now outreach officer at the European Space Agency, told Live Science.     
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Wealthy Asteroid Now Visible

A NASA spacecraft is still on its way to explore an ultra-valuable, metal-rich asteroid. However, you don't have to wait for the space agency to beam back pictures of the so-called "golden asteroid" in a few years to see it. Per Astronomy Magazine, 

Asteroid 16 Psyche will reach opposition—opposite to the Sun in our sky—at 1 a.m. CT on Aug. 6. It will be located among the stars in northern Capricornus glowing at a magnitude of 9.6. You can find Psyche in the southwestern sky in the early morning hours leading up to dawn, but you'll need a telescope to do so.           READ MORE...

NASA: Past Life on Mars

• 
  In its ancient past, Mars likely contained many of the necessarily ingredients for microbial life to flourish on its surface.
• Now, a new discovery by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a trifecta of compelling evidence—including the presence of water, organic compounds, and a chemical energy source—all on one rock located in the Jezero Crater.
• Although this is the best clue yet that microbial life existed on Mars, there are still other explanations that could explain this geologic display without the existence of microbes.

“Is there life on Mars” is a question that has vexed astrobiologists and David Bowie alike. While the latter imagined some macabre collection of arachnids on the Red Planet, NASA scientists are fixated on finding evidence that microbial life once flourished on the fourth rock from the Sun. So fixated, in fact, that the space agency has spent more than $5 billion getting two immensely complicated robotic rovers—Curiosity and Perseverance—onto the Martian surface with this specific microbial mission in mind.     READ MORE...

Confirmed Cave on the MOON

FILE - A plane passes in front of the moon, Aug. 30, 2023, in Chicago. Scientists have confirmed a cave on the moon, not far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 55 years ago this week, and suspect there are hundreds more that could house future astronauts. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, file)






CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have confirmed a cave on the moon, not far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 55 years ago, and suspect there are hundreds more that could house future astronauts.

An Italian-led team reported Monday that there’s evidence for a sizable cave accessible from the deepest known pit on the moon. It’s located at the Sea of Tranquility, just 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Apollo 11’s landing site.

The pit, like the more than 200 others discovered up there, was created by the collapse of a lava tube.

Researchers analyzed radar measurements by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and compared the results with lava tubes on Earth. Their findings appeared in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The radar data reveals only the initial part of the underground cavity, according to the scientists. They estimate it’s at least 130 feet (40 meters) wide and tens of yards (meters) long, probably more.      READ MORE...