The Kepler mission and its extension, called K2, discovered thousands of exoplanets. It detected them using the transit technique, measuring the dip in light intensity whenever an orbiting planet moved across the face of ...
Astronomy
Jun 24, 2019
0
0
In recent years, astronomers have discovered thousands of planets and planetary systems orbiting around nearby stars. Some are small and rocky like the Earth, whilst others are gas giants like Jupiter. It is now believed ...
Astronomy
Jun 06, 2019
0
72
When the first humans stepped onto the moon a half-century ago on July 20, 1969, they knew they were venturing into the unknown. Some had feared their lander would be swallowed up by bottomless layers of dust as almost nothing ...
Space Exploration
Jun 06, 2019
0
9
Astronomers using the combined power of two Hawaii telescopes have taken groundbreaking, sharp new images of a distant planetary system that likely resembles a baby version of our solar system.
Astronomy
May 15, 2019
2
353
The galaxy is littered with planetary systems vastly different from ours. In the solar system, the planet closest to the Sun—Mercury, with an orbit of 88 days—is also the smallest. But NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered ...
Astronomy
May 09, 2019
4
215
NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission released its fifth year of survey data on April 11, 2019. The five years of NEOWISE data have significantly advanced scientists' knowledge of ...
Space Exploration
Apr 16, 2019
0
21
Oceanographers studying the physics of the global ocean have long found themselves facing a conundrum: Fluid dynamical balances can vary greatly from point to point, rendering it difficult to make global generalizations.
Earth Sciences
Mar 21, 2019
0
187
Planetary systems can be harsh environments in their early history. The young worlds orbit suns in stellar nurseries, clusters of stars where violent encounters are commonplace. None of this makes it easy for life to get ...
Astronomy
Mar 06, 2019
5
1804
Some of the peculiar aspects of our solar system—an enveloping cloud of comets, dwarf planets in weird orbits and, if it truly exists, a possible Planet Nine far from the sun—have been linked to the close approach of ...
Astronomy
Feb 28, 2019
5
463
ESA's planet-defending Hera mission will set a new record in space. The asteroid investigator will not only be the first spacecraft to explore a binary asteroid system – the Didymos pair – but the smaller of these two ...
Space Exploration
Feb 04, 2019
0
16
