Comprehensive coverage

Solar System

Storm clouds over the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Archive photo). Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Due to Hurricane Milton, the launch of the Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter, which was planned for yesterday, 10/10/2024, was postponed

  • No comments
Severe weather conditions in Florida are forcing NASA and SpaceX to delay the launch of the Europa Clipper mission, which was designed to explore Jupiter's icy moon.
An artist's illustration depicts a primordial black hole (left) speeding across the surface of Mars and causing a slight "tremor" in Mars' orbit (right), with the sun in the background. Scientists from MIT claim that such a tremor may be detectable with the instruments available today. Credit: Illustration by Benjamin Lehmann, used with SpaceEngine @ Cosmographic Software LLC.

Dark matter: primordial black holes and the mysterious wobble of Mars' orbit

  • One response
These holes, which are theoretical remnants of the early universe, may be detectable every decade as they pass through the solar system, offering a new way to study the elusive dark matter
A close-up of the intense X7.1 solar flare on October 1, 2024, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA/SDO

A strong solar flare was recorded on October 1, 2024

  • No comments
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has recorded one of the strongest outbursts in the current solar cycle, with the potential to impact technological systems on Earth and in space
This photo shows technicians completing operations before refueling the Europa Clipper spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 11, 2024. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Ready for justice: NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will be fueled for launch

  • One response
The Europa Clipper spacecraft was recently refueled, an important step in preparation for its mission to Jupiter's moon Europa
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Illustration: depositphotos.com

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was a carbonaceous asteroid

  • No comments
This asteroid, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, came from a C-type asteroid that originated beyond Jupiter, thus ruling out other hypotheses such as volcanic activity or comets
This artist rendering shows NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Europa Clipper spacecraft: Big solar wings power NASA's largest planetary spacecraft ever

  • No comments
A meteor breaks up in the atmosphere. Such a phenomenon caused global cooling and the extinction of large animals 12,800 years ago. The image was prepared using DALEE and is not a scientific image

Surprising discovery: a cosmic explosion in the atmosphere may have caused global cooling 12,800 years ago

  • 2 תגובות
Astronauts walk on Mars soil. Illustration: depositphotos.com

The science of survival on Mars: What really protects astronauts from radiation

  • No comments
Effective radiation shielding materials such as plastics, rubber, synthetic fibers and Martian soil have been identified as protecting astronauts on Mars, increasing the viability of long-duration missions and future settlement plans
An asteroid hits the Earth. Illustration: depositphotos.com

NASA faces a (theoretical) 72% chance of an asteroid impact

  • No comments
NASA's biennial exercises simulate an asteroid impact to prepare international response strategies. These scenarios use real data to test emergency preparedness and explore diversion techniques like the DART mission
The Webb telescope, seen in the lower right corner of this figure, was used to verify the presence of mummified minerals on the surface of the asteroid Psyche. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

The Webb telescope reveals water compounds in asteroid Psyche

  • No comments
The observations will help analyze data from NASA's Psyche spacecraft on its way to this interesting asteroid that orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt - between Mars and Jupiter
The Sun is now again approaching its 11-year "Schwab Cycle" maximum activity, here image taken by Solar Orbiter in October 2023. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team

A cosmic mystery solved? New evidence shows that the planets influence the Sun's magnetic cycles.

  • No comments
Researchers identify eddy currents in the Sun, called Rossby waves, as mediating the tidal effects of Venus, Earth and Jupiter on the Sun's magnetic activity
The Parker Solar Probe ruled out the possibility that the S-shaped bands in the Sun's magnetic field are the source of the corona's heat. Credit: NASA and Levi Hutmacher, Michigan Engineering

The Parker Solar Probe shatters a theory related to the very hot corona of the Sun

  • No comments
This composite image shows suspicious jets of water vapor erupting at the 7 o'clock position outside the boundary of Jupiter's moon Europa. The streams, imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's Imaging Spectrometer camera, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. The Hubble data were collected on January 26, 2014. The image of Europa superimposed on the Hubble data consists of data from the Galileo Voyager missions Credit: NASA/ESA/W. Sparks (STScI)/USGS Astrogeology Science Center

NASA researchers propose to look for signatures of life near the surface of Enceladus and Europa

  • 2 תגובות
NASA scientists conducted an experiment simulating the conditions on the icy moons Europa of Jupiter and Enceladus of Shabati and came to the conclusion that if there is life on them you don't need to dig deep to find at least their remains
A top view of one of the containers containing rocks and dust from the Beno asteroid, scaled in centimeters. Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Aebersold

A surprise in the sample from the asteroid: its structure contains the "original ingredients" of the solar system

  • No comments
The OSIRIS-Rex sample analysis team found that the asteroid dust was rich in carbon, nitrogen, organic compounds and magnesium sodium phosphate, suggesting special historical conditions.
Comet attack on young earth. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mysterious Travelers: Are We Drinking Water Brought by Dark Comets?

  • No comments
Could asteroids, which are remnants of comets, be one of the main sources of water on Earth?
The preplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NSF

Target board or donut? Iron meteorites reveal the early form of our solar system

  • No comments
The formation of our solar system involved the accretion of gas and dust into a preplanetary disk, with meteorites providing important insights into its early composition.
Earthquakes on Mars. The image was prepared using DALEE for illustration only and is not a scientific image

Seismic waves on Mars: A new way to discover water hidden deep below the surface of Mars

  • No comments
Scientists are exploring the potential of using seismoelectric signals from Martian tremors to detect underground water on Mars, a method inspired by similar techniques on Earth but adapted to the unique conditions of Mars
This week, two significant asteroids, including the newly discovered asteroid 2024 MK, passed safely by Earth in a coincidence that coincides with Asteroid Day. Credit: ESA – P.Carril.

Two large asteroids passed by the Earth only 42 hours apart (one of them was discovered a week ago and will pass today)

  • One response
The asteroids that are about 2 km in diameter passed one on July 27 and one today, July 29 passed at a safe distance. One of them was discovered only a week ago, which turns on a red light
The Earth's core began to slow down around 2010, moving more slowly than the Earth's surface. Credit: USC

Is the Earth's core losing speed?

  • 12 תגובות
The researchers collected and analyzed seismic data recorded around the South Sandwich Islands from 121 repeated earthquakes that occurred between 1991 and 2023. They also used data from two Soviet nuclear tests between 1971 and 1974,
The 360-meter-diameter asteroid Apophis will come very close to Earth on April 13, 2029. Credit: Jonathan Mennell / via Eyes on the Solar System, NASA/JPL

Approaching an asteroid: Exploring Apophis using advanced minisatellites

  • No comments
German researchers and the German Space Agency will try three strategies for the study of the asteroid that will approach in 2029 to a distance of 31 thousand km from the Earth
In a paper published in the journal Icarus, Alex Nguyen, a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, used mathematical models and images from the New Horizons spacecraft to take a closer look at the ocean that he says likely covers Pluto beneath a thick layer of nitrogen, methane and water ice. (Image: NASA)

Surprise: an ocean of liquid water on Pluto

  • 8 תגובות
They estimate that Pluto's ocean is, at most, about 8% denser than seawater on Earth, or about the same as the Great Salt Lake in Utah (but much less salty than the Dead Sea.
Doomsday asteroid. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Can we discover doomsday asteroids in time?

  • 2 תגובות
Today there is only one system in the world focused on this activity - NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar, part of the Deep Space Network (DSN). But an idea of ​​a new instrument from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
A pair of stereoscopic images of asteroid Dinkinsh and its satellite Salam, created using data collected by the L'LORRI camera on the Lucy spacecraft in the minutes around closest approach on November 1, 2023. Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab for the original images/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni for stereo processing of the images

A new method rewrites the age of asteroids

  • One response
Salam, a moon of the Dinkinsh asteroid was discovered to be a "unique body known as a "couple in contact" and consists of two lobes that are actually piles of stones stuck together, and the first of its kind seen orbiting another asteroid
In this photograph from the SDO Solar Observatory, the lower right area of ​​the Sun is shown in gold on a black background. There are several loops coming down from the sun. Towards the middle is a bright white area - the flare of the sun. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Sun flares and solar flares can affect radio communications, power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.

The aurora borealis was observed in Florida: a strong solar storm is still flooding the earth and is expected to reach another peak tomorrow (Sun)

  • No comments
NOAA's forecast predicts continued solar activity, with more eruptions and emissions likely as the Sun approaches its 11-year solar maximum. However, the current sunspot cluster will rotate soon
Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158. The majestic galaxy has a pinwheel shape consisting of bright blue stars surrounding a yellow-white concentration of central stars. This concentration has a diagonal line of stars across it, called a bar. The galaxy is tilted inward to our view from Earth. A white S-shaped line slightly across the top is the Hubble image of an asteroid hovering across the field of view.. It looks dashed because the image is a composite of several exposures of the asteroid flying like a race car. Credit: NASA, ESA, PG Martín (Autonomous University of Madrid), J. DePasquale (STScI). Credits: A. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley)

Discovering new asteroids in old Hubble images

  • One response
Astronomers re-examined 37,000 images taken by Hubble over 19 years of objects in deep space. The reward was finding 1701 asteroid orbits in the asteroid belt, of which 1031 are uncatalogued asteroids. About 400 of the asteroids are not
Science website logo
SEARCH