Search results for Kuiper Belt

Planetary Sciences Apr 13, 2023

In a research first, team uses precision astrometry to discover new exoplanet outside Earth's solar system

An international research team led by UTSA Associate Professor of Astrophysics Thayne Currie has made a breakthrough in accelerating the search for new planets.

Astronomy Mar 22, 2023

A surprisingly simple explanation for 'Oumuamua's weird orbit

In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or dust tail, like most comets, and ...

Planetary Sciences Mar 15, 2023

Pluto team updates science from the solar system's edge

Nearly eight years after its historic Pluto flyby, NASA's New Horizons probe is getting ready for another round of observations made from the icy edge of the solar system—and this time, its field of view will range from Uranus ...

Planetary Sciences Mar 10, 2023

Venus could have had oceans long after life started on Earth

Today Venus has a dry, oxygen-poor atmosphere. But recent studies have proposed that the early planet may have had liquid water and reflective clouds that could have sustained habitable conditions. Researchers at the University ...

Astronomy Feb 22, 2023

In search of Planet 9: An unconventional detection approach

There is a mystery in our solar system surrounding the orbits of Kuiper belt objects. More than one trillion icy objects smaller than our moon orbit the sun in a donut-shaped ring beyond Neptune. Oddly, a cluster of outer ...

Astronomy Feb 22, 2023

Spotting a hidden exoplanet

No, you're not seeing double: This photo shows two images of a Jupiter-like planet that orbits the star AF Leporis. The planet has been imaged by two independent groups of astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on ESO's ...

Astronomy Feb 1, 2023

Numerical simulations of planetesimal formation reproduce key properties of asteroids, comets

With simulations that go into finer details than ever before, Brooke Polak of the University of Heidelberg and Hubert Klahr at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) have modeled a key phase in the formation of planets ...

Planetary Sciences Jan 17, 2023

A hybrid fission/fusion reactor could be the best way to get through the ice on Europa

In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will send two robotic missions to explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa. These are none other than NASA's Europa Clipper and the ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), ...

Space Exploration Jan 5, 2023

New mass spectrometer for NASA's Europa Clipper mission

A groundbreaking new mass spectrometer designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been delivered for integration onto NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive in the Jovian ...

Astrobiology Dec 21, 2022

We could spread life to the Milky Way with comets. But should we?

Here's a thorny problem: What if life doesn't always appear on planets that can support it? What if we find more and more exoplanets and determine that some of them are habitable? What if we also determine that life hasn't ...

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