Tag: Astrophysics
-
James Webb Space Telescope shipped to Texas for its biggest test yet
The primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope pictured at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn The centerpiece of the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a three-month test to ensure the observatory’s sensors and gold-coated mirrors work in the frigid…
-
Gravitational wave testbed repurposed as comet dust detector
In the final months of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission, scientists have found an unexpected use for the trailblazing testbed for a future gravitational wave observatory by tracking the tiny dings made by microscopic particles that strike the spacecraft in deep space, exploiting the impacts to learn about the population of dust grains cast off by…
-
With an eye on growing cost, NASA aims for 2025 launch of next ‘great observatory’
Artist’s concept of the WFIRST spacecraft. Credit: NASA NASA managers say the WFIRST mission, the next in the agency’s line of powerful observatories after the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, could cost around $3.2 billion after budgeting for a novel first-of-its-kind instrument to probe the make-up of planets around nearby stars and a bigger-than-expected launch…
-
Star found with record seven Earth-size planets
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Astronomers have discovered seven roughly Earth-size planets very close to a cool dwarf star some 39 light years from Earth, including three orbiting…
-
Watch a video replay of NASA’s exoplanet announcement
NASA announced Wednesday the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star 39 light-years from Earth, and three of the rocky worlds may have the right conditions to support life. Read our full story. Email the author. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
-
NASA resumes JWST vibration testing
A clean tent is lowered over the James Webb Space Telescope, with its wings folded back in launch configuration, before the start of vibration testing in November. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn Vibration testing on the James Webb Space Telescope, the multibillion-dollar successor to Hubble, has resumed after engineers traced a problem that cropped up last month…
-
NASA picks IXPE: Space telescope will study X-ray fingerprints of black holes
An artist’s conception shows the accretion disk around an active black hole. (NASA Illustration) NASA is committing $188 million to build and launch a space telescope to observe patterns in the X-ray radiation emanating from black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, was chosen from a field of three…
-
Engineers examine unexpected readings from JWST shake test
The James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror, composed of 18 individual segments, is seen inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center earlier this year. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center NASA says engineers are diagnosing the source of “anomalous readings” during a recent vibration test of the sensitive optics and sensors at the…
-
China lofts pulsar navigation demo satellite
A Long March 11 rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan space center at 2342 GMT (6:42 p.m. EST) Wednesday. Credit: CCTV China launched an innovative satellite Wednesday that will look for X-ray signals from pulsars, the fast-spinning super-dense remnants of collapsed stars, to determine its exact location in space. The experimental pulsar navigation mission carries…
-
Potentially-habitable planet discovered around nearest star Proxima Centauri
An artist’s impression of what the surface of Proxima b might look like. Notice the red sky around the star and the darker sky elsewhere. Image: ESO/M Kornmesser. A planet with at least 1.3 times the mass of Earth has been discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima…