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Space

NASA Plans to Land First Person of Color & First Woman on the Moon by 2024

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Artemis Program - Amazon

NASA will land the first person of color in addition to the first woman on the moon with the Artemis program, NASA’s Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk revealed today (April 9). Today, President Joe Biden’s administration submitted a budget proposal outlining its priorities for discretionary spending for the fiscal year 2022 to Congress. The proposed budget includes a funding increase that will support Mars sample return, research, climate science and more at NASA. Jurczyk responded to the news in a NASA statement and additionally revealed that the agency will be landing the first person of color on the moon with the … Read more

Just In From Mars – The First Color Photo

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Mars color photo - NASA

OK, so it’s just dirt. But still…: NASA’s little Mars helicopter has opened its eyes on the Red Planet. The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper, known as Ingenuity, snapped its first color photograph on Saturday (April 3), shortly after being lowered to the Martian dirt by the Perseverance rover. The tableau shows “the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater and a portion of two wheels of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover,” agency officials wrote in a description on Monday (April 5), when the photo was released. Full Story From Live Science

Mysterious X-Rays Are Flaring Out of Uranus

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Uranus - Pixabay

Subtitled: Uranus is always full of surprises. Cue the jokes. :) For the first time, astronomers have detected mysterious X-rays flaring out of Uranus. How is this happening? According to NASA scientists, Uranus is so massive that it could just be scattering X-rays given off by the sun more than a billion miles away. Or, perhaps the fine rings of dust surrounding Uranus are generating their own radiation through some unknown process. A closer study of Uranus is required to know for sure. Uranus is cold, windy and made almost entirely of ice and gas. Even though it’s enormous (with … Read more

Martian Polar “Spiders” Finally Explained

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Martian Polar "Spiders - NASA

Ziggy played guitar, and scientists in the U.K. played with a big chunk of dry ice to try to figure out what’s behind the strange alien patterns known as the “spiders on Mars.” Those patterns, visible in satellite images of the Red Planet’s south pole, aren’t real spiders, of course; but the branching, black shapes carved into the Martian surface look creepy enough that researchers dubbed them “araneiforms” (meaning “spider-like”) after discovering the shapes more than two decades ago. Measuring up to 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) across, the gargantuan shapes don’t resemble anything on Earth. But in a new study … Read more

Mars: Curiosity Rover Snaps a Selfie

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Curiosity Rovver selfie - NASA

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity recently posed for a selfie in front of a beautiful Martian rock outcrop called “Mont Mercou,” after probing the area for clues about the Red Planet’s past. Curiosity landed inside Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012 with a primary goal to find out if the planet is, or was, suitable for life. Earlier in March, the rover arrived at a scenic rock formation as it traversed the slopes of Mount Sharp — a 3-mile-tall (5 km) mountain located at the center of Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been climbing since September 2014. This … Read more

How Long Would It Take to Walk Around the Moon?

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Moon Landing - Deposit Photos

From our vantage point on Earth, the moon looks small. But if you were to hop in a spaceship, don a spacesuit and go on an epic lunar hike, how long would it take to walk all the way around it? The answer depends on myriad factors, including how fast you can go, how much time every day you spend walking, and what detours you’ll need to take to avoid dangerous topography. Such a trip around the moon could take longer than a year, but in reality, there are a lot more challenges to overcome. A total of 12 humans … Read more

Lava tubes in Hawaii could be a dress rehearsal for Lunar/Martian colonies

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Thurston Lava Tube - Deposit Photos

When humans build the first bases and habitats on other worlds, they’ll confront dangers and challenges unlike any faced by the astronauts who went before them. To prepare for such challenges, scientists are descending deep underground into lava tubes in Hawaii that simulate conditions on rocky alien worlds. There, mission crew members navigate uneven volcanic terrain and endure the physical constraints of performing research in a hostile environment. Wearing bulky suits like those required for extraterrestrial exploration, the scientists study the geology and organisms found in lava tunnels and caverns at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. This unique research station at … Read more

SPACE: Black Hole’s Magnetic Fields Revealed

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Black Hole magnetic fields - NASA / EHT Collaboration

First-of-their-kind images of the magnetic field around a black hole may explain how the black hole shoots out a jet of energy and matter more than 5,000 light-years into space. The new images come from the first black hole ever photographed, which sits at the center of Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy 55 million light-years away. In 2017, an international collaboration of more than 300 researchers coordinated 11 radio telescopes around the globe to observe the center of M87. The resulting joint telescope was dubbed the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The result, released in 2019, was an image of … Read more

Is There a Protoplanet Inside the Earth?

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planet collision - pixabay

A protoplanet slammed into the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, knocking loose a chunk of rock that would later become the moon. Now, scientists say that remnants of that protoplanet can still be found, lodged deep inside Earth, Science Magazine reported. If remains of the protoplanet, known as Theia, did stick around after the impact, that may explain why two continent-size blobs of hot rock now lie in the Earth’s mantle, one beneath Africa and the other under the Pacific Ocean. These massive blobs would stand about 100 times taller than Mount Everest, were they ever hauled up to … Read more

History Repeats Itself – Part of the Wright Brothers’ Plane to Fly on Mars

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Wright Brothers' Plane - pixabay

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars in February, it carried a bit of the Wright brothers’ first airplane with it. A swatch of fabric from the airplane, known as the Flyer, is secured beneath the solar panels of an experimental helicopter, which in turn is strapped to the underside of the rover, according to a statement from NASA. The helicopter, called Ingenuity, is attached to the rover for now, but soon, if all goes well, scientists will pilot the aircraft remotely over the surface of the Red Planet. This flight will be attempted “no earlier than April 8,” … Read more