Tag: Astrophysics
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Dwindling fuel levels and a balky thruster can’t keep Kepler down
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…
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51 years after discovering pulsars, Jocelyn Bell Burnell wins $3M Breakthrough Prize
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…
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TESS’s planet hunt begins
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…
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Weather-monitoring and tech demo CubeSats deployed in orbit
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…
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NASA’s Kepler telescope nears end of mission
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…
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Webb’s launch delayed to 2021 at an extra cost of nearly $1 billion
Artist’s illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: Northrop Grumman An independent panel has informed NASA that the James Webb Space Telescope will not be ready for launch until March 2021, and Congress will have to reauthorize the long-delayed, over-budget mission after breaching an $8 billion cost cap, officials said Wednesday. Blunders made by…
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Chinese data relay satellite nears post over far side of the moon
Artist’s illustration of the Queqiao spacecraft. Credit: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. A Chinese communications satellite carrying a Dutch radio astronomy instrument launched last month is expected to maneuver into position around a gravitationally-stable point beyond the moon in the coming days, ready to relay telemetry and data between Earth and the Chang’e 4…
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The way we think of black holes just might be in for a radical change … again
Columbia theoretical physicist Brian Greene delves into Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity in “Light Falls,” a theater piece that made its debut at the World Science Festival. (Greg Kessler Photo / World Science Festival) After decades’ worth of mystery, it feels as if physicists are finally closing in on the nature of black holes, thanks…
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JWST beset by another problem as Northrop Grumman revamps training
The telescope element of the Webb observatory was unpacked from its shipping container March 8 after arriving at Northrop Grumman’s factory in Redondo Beach, California. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn Engineers working on the James Webb Space Telescope, which had its launch delayed to 2020 earlier this year, recently discovered another problem during testing at the observatory’s…
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NASA’s Rossi X-ray probe makes a quiet exit after spending 22 years in orbit
News Brief: A month after the breakup of China’s Tiangong-1 space lab, another spacecraft went to its fiery doom today with far less fanfare. Orbital assessments from the U.S. military’s Joint Space Operations Center indicate that NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer made its atmospheric re-entry at roughly 7:45 a.m. PT (14:45 GMT), more than 22…