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An international team of scientists led by astronomer Adam Deller (ASTRON) have used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to set a new distance accuracy record, pegging a pulsar called PSR J2222-0137 at 871.4 light-years from Earth. They did this by observing the object over a two-year period to detect its parallax, the slight shift in apparent position against background objects when viewed from opposite ends of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
(Phys.org) —Assembly of the backbone of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame, a fixture that will be used to connect all the pieces of the telescope together.
The backplane support frame will bring together Webb's center section and wings, secondary mirror support structure, aft optics system and integrated science instrument module. ATK of Magna, Utah, finished fabrication under the direction of the observatory's builder, Northrop Grumman Corp.
NASA finds record 7.5 billion mile distance between a planet and its star - SlashGearNASA has revealed that its Hubble Space Telescope made a new discovery: evidence of a planet forming at a record distance from its star, something that – if proven to be true – could then shake up current theories regarding planets and their formation. The discovery was made in the Hydra the Sea Serpent constellation.
A new 1.3-billion-pixel image from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity allows viewers to zoom in and investigate part of the Red Planet in incredible detail.
The huge mosaic stitches together nearly 900 photos that the Curiosity rover took with some of its 17 cameras during the robot's exploration of Gale Crater on Mars, NASA officials said.
China Readying 1st Moon Rover for Launch This YearNASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will keep a high-resolution eye out for China’s first soft landing on the moon and deployment of a rover..
As three Chinese astronauts zip around the Earth aboard a prototype space station, the country is gearing up to launch its first moon rover in the coming months.
China's robotic Chang'e 3 mission, reportedly slated to blast off toward the end of 2013, marks a big step forward in the nation's lunar exploration program. Chang'e 3 will become China's first craft to attempt a soft landing and rover deployment on the surface of the moon.
A Russian SS-18 Satan intercontinental ballistic missile is rocket fueled and just might be the right tool to play real-life Asteroids in outer space.
Fans of Russian military equipment might recall the U.S.S.R’s old first-strike SS-18 Satan missile, a heavy intercontinental warhead aimed at Soviet enemies. Today, they can be used against Russian enemies hailing from outer space.
Not gray aliens.
Asteroids.
Russia was walloped by meteorites earlier this February after a meteor broke up in the atmosphere and showered space rock onto buildings, injuring over 1,000 people in the Urals mountains region.
Europe's prototype spacecraft starts re-entry tests | DVICEEurope has gotten pretty good at shuttling supplies to the ISS by way of their robotic cargo vessels. But the process thus far has been a tad on the costly side, what with the entire shuttle burning up on re-entry every time. Well, the days of kamikaze robot pilots making suicidal cargo deliveries looks like it will soon be at an end, thanks to the development of a new reusable spaceship.
While the U.S. cracked the reusable shuttle nut a while ago, Europe doesn't quite have the storied history that Americans and Russians share. They're also attacking the shuttle design from an entirely different angle than the old U.S. designs. Robot pilots notwithstanding.
Astronomers find three planets in Gliese 667C's habitable zoneAstronomers have a good day when they detect one planet inside a star system's habitable zone. A mostly European team of researchers must be giddy, then, as it just found three of those ideally located planets around Gliese 667C. The group has combined existing observations from the ESO's Very Large Telescope with new HARPS telescope data to spot the trio of super-Earths, all of which could theoretically support liquid water. As long as the discovery holds up, it may have a big impact on exoplanetary research: it shows both that three super-Earths can exist in one system and that more than one survivable planet can orbit a low-mass star. We can only do so much with the findings when Gliese 667C is 22 light-years away, but it's good to learn that space could be more human-friendly than we once thought.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 25 (Reuters) - A neighbor star has at least six planets in orbit, including three circling at the right distance for water to exist, a condition believed to be necessary for life, scientists said on Tuesday.
Previously, the star known as Gliese 667C was found to be hosting three planets, one of which was located in its so-called "habitable zone" where temperatures could support liquid surface water. That planet and two newly found sibling worlds are bigger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune.
Astrophysicist Eric Davis is one of the leaders in the field of faster-than-light (FTL) space travel. But for Davis, humanity's potential to explore the vastness of space at warp speed is not science fiction.
An international group of astronomers reporting in the journal Nature has discovered two extrasolar planets circling Sun-like stars in the open star cluster NGC 6811.
On Monday, NASA announced that its advanced ion propulsion engine operated for 48,000 hours, or five and a half years – and that’s without stops for fuel or coffee. Developed under NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) project, the engine now holds the record for the longest test duration of any type of space propulsion system.
NEXT is a solar electric propulsion system where electricity from the spacecraft’s solar panels is used to power a a 7-kW class ion thruster. In this, particles of xenon gas are electrically charged and then accelerated to speeds up to 90,000 mph (145,000 km/h). Such thrusters have already been used on spacecraft, such as NASA’s Dawn probe, and engineers are very interested in them because of their much higher performance compared to conventional chemical rocket engines.
NAIROBI — The construction of a huge radio telescope in South Africa is giving a boost to the science and space industries in Kenya. The country’s top space physicist says telecommunication companies are leasing out their now-obsolete satellite dishes for use in the new project.
Several African countries are working to build a large radio telescope known as the Square Kilometer Array, or SKA. The core station will be in South Africa, while other countries across the continent - Ghana, Mauritius, Botswana and Kenya - will host nodes that will operate together.
Read more: Researchers working on deflector shield to protect astronauts in space - UPI.comDIDCOT, England, June 28 (UPI) -- The command "shields up" to protect humans traveling in spacecraft from radiation may soon graduate from the realm of science fiction, British researchers say.
Scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory say they've been testing a lightweight system to protect astronauts from harmful radiation on long voyages, such as a round trip to Mars, who would be exposed to cosmic rays and high-energy particles from the sun contained in solar storms.
Quantum weirdness can generate a molecule in space that shouldn't exist by the classic rules of chemistry. If interstellar space is really a kind of quantum chemistry lab, that might also account for a host of other organic molecules glimpsed in space.
Interstellar space should be too cold for most chemical reactions to occur, as the low temperature makes it tough for molecules drifting through space to acquire the energy needed to break their bonds. "There is a standard law that says as you lower the temperature, the rates of reactions should slow down," says Dwayne Heard of the University of Leeds, UK.
(Sen) - A revolutionary engine that can turn an aircraft into an orbiting spaceplane has won fresh backing from the British Government.
The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, singled out the SABRE project that will power Skylon into space in his 2013 spending review delivered to Parliament.
The hybrid engine - its name stands for Synergistic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine - is currently being developed by Reaction Engines, based at Abingdon, near Oxford.
Last year, the engineers developing it, led by Alan Bond, mastered a key factor in its design that was described as the biggest breakthrough in flight technology since the invention of the jet engine.
Praising UK inventiveness and historic successes, Mr Osborne said: “Britain was once the place where the future was invented. From the railway to the jet engine to the World Wide Web.* We can be that country again . . . a huge amount of innovation and discovery still goes on.”
The Chancellor’s report pledged to commit to funding high-priority projects, including SABRE, though further details of the investments were not given.
Until now, spacecraft heading for orbit have had to be launched by conventional rockets because of the amount of fuel needed to be get them into space.
The Fermi space telescope has updated its catalogue of the Universe's most violent neighbourhoods.
Fermi catches gamma rays, the most energetic light, spewing from nature's most extreme physical processes.
The new catalogue, posted on the Arxiv server, lists the sources of the highest-energy gamma rays that Fermi has yet seen: 514 of them.
Some 65 of them are "unassociated" sources that may turn out to be completely new astronomical objects.
The catalogue is to be published in the Astrophysical Journal
