Tag: Astrophysics

  • Controllers troubleshoot problem with Hubble camera

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    EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated Jan. 11 with correction regarding the field-of-view of the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument. Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis took this photo of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. Credit: NASA The partial shutdown of the U.S. government could complicate efforts to troubleshoot a suspected hardware problem with the Hubble Space Telescope’s…

  • Astronomers announce first exoplanets discovered by NASA’s TESS mission

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    Six months into its mission scanning the sky for planets around other stars, NASA’s orbiting TESS observatory has found three previously-undiscovered worlds and hundreds candidates requiring follow-up observations, the first batch of a potential haul of up to 10,000 exoplanet detections over TESS’s planned two-year mission, astronomers announced this week. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey…

  • NASA says goodbye to Kepler planet-hunter

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    Artist’s concept of the Kepler observatory. Credit: NASA Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month. The last signals to Kepler were broadcast from a control center at the Laboratory for…

  • NASA’s trailblazing Kepler telescope ends planet hunt

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    This illustration depicts NASA’s exoplanet hunter, the Kepler space telescope. Credits: NASA/Wendy Stenzel/Daniel Rutter NASA’s Kepler telescope has run out of fuel and ended science operations, closing out a pioneering decade-long mission that showed planets are commonplace across our galaxy, agency officials said Tuesday. The observatory’s supply of hydrazine has run low for months, but…

  • Hubble Space Telescope in safe mode with gyro trouble

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION File photo of the Hubble Space Telescope following its release from the shuttle Atlantis in May 2009. Credit: NASA NASA has suspended science operations with the Hubble Space Telescope and put the observatory into protective “safe mode” while engineers troubleshoot problems with one of the spacecraft’s three remaining…

  • Dwindling fuel levels and a balky thruster can’t keep Kepler down

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    Artist’s concept of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: NASA After downloading science data and bypassing a balky thruster, NASA’s Kepler mission has resumed its search for planets around other stars after a two-month pause in observations, but engineers expect the spacecraft to soon run out of fuel. NASA said in a statement Wednesday that the Kepler…

  • 51 years after discovering pulsars, Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins $3M Breakthrough Prize

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    British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell is featured in an episode of the BBC documentary series “Beautiful Minds.” (BBC Photo) British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell missed out on a share of the Nobel Prize for her part in the discovery of the first radio pulsars in 1967, but now she has a $3 million Breakthrough Prize…

  • TESS’s planet hunt begins

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    Artist’s concept of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA NASA’s newest observatory in space has started its search for planets around other stars, officials said Friday, as astronomers zero in on worlds that are ripe for research by follow-up missions like the James Webb Space Telescope. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite officially began a…

  • Weather-monitoring and tech demo CubeSats deployed in orbit

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    Artist’s illustration of the RainCube spacecraft released from the International Space Station on July 13. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Fifteen CubeSats owned by NASA, Spire Global, and U.S. research institutions launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship in May have been released into orbit, beginning missions to demonstrate miniaturized, low-cost Earth science instruments and join a…

  • NASA’s Kepler telescope nears end of mission

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    Artist’s concept of the Kepler observatory. Credit: NASA Nearly a decade after launching from Cape Canaveral on a planet-hunting quest that has netted 2,650 new confirmed worlds beyond our solar system, NASA’s Kepler telescope has paused its observations after on-board sensors detected it is running low on fuel. Kepler’s dwindling fuel supply was not a…