An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that …
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Research by NASA and international scientists concludes giant asteroids, similar or larger than the one believed to have killed the dinosaurs, hit Earth billions of years ago with more frequency than previously thought.
To cause the dinosaur extinction, the killer asteroid that impacted Earth 65 million years ago would have …
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Findings from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveal new details about the giant asteroid Vesta, including its varied surface composition, sharp temperature changes and clues to its internal structure. The findings were presented today at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria and will help scientists better understand the early solar …
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The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is seeking proposals to continue promising studies for which it has supported the first phase. These cutting-edge concepts have the potential to transform future exploration missions, enable new capabilities, or significantly alter current approaches to launching, building, and operating aerospace systems.
“These transformative …
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Saturn’s giant moon Titan hides behind a thick, smoggy atmosphere that’s well known to scientists as one of the most complex chemical environments in the solar system. It’s a productive “factory” cranking out hydrocarbons that rain down on Titan’s icy surface and cloak it in soot. With a brutally …
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While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both. The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is one of the first known …
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An explosion over California that rattled homes across at least two states on Sunday, April 22nd, has been analyzed by NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office: According to Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, it was a natural meteoroid the size of a mini-van. Analysts say the space rock exploded …
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Seattle, Wash. – April 24, 2012 — Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.…
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Following on from my post a couple of days ago about how a number of Tech Billionaires and high-flyers have gotten together to create a private space program, I came across this article which provides a lot more detail about their plans…
There’s gold in them there hills. You know, …
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Scientists working with images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered strange half-mile-sized (kilometer-sized) objects punching through parts of Saturn’s F ring, leaving glittering trails behind them. These trails in the rings, which scientists are calling “mini-jets,” fill in a missing link in our story of the curious behavior of the …
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