After the small Ingenuity Mars helicopter blew everyone away with its performance, it became clear that a future mission to Mars should involve more helicopters like it, with even more capabilities. The main proposal here is NASA’s SkyFall mission, which would involve three autonomous helicopters, capable of searching for resources such as water. To do … Read more
Heatwaves and wildfires are not just scorching forests, they add to tipping-point risks in the world’s vast permafrost regions, which contain three times more carbon than all living vegetation on Earth. This is a big concern for Gustaf Hugelius, a professor at the Bolin Center for Climate Research at Stockholm University, Sweden, and a leading … Read more
Astronomers have detected the fastest known star in the Milky Way, hurtling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. The star, called S301, travels at about 25,000 kilometers (15,500 miles) per second, 100,000 times faster than a commercial airliner. It is also the closest known star to the Milky Way’s central … Read more
Kim Blisniuk, professor of geology at San Jose State University, examines Sanborn County Park in Saratoga on August 6. Blisniuk investigates the terrain and rock formations within the park, where the San Andreas Fault runs directly below. Santiago Mejía/SF Chronicle According to new research, a large earthquake is more likely to occur just south of … Read more
WASHINGTON – Katalyst Space and NASA have canceled plans to use the company’s Link spacecraft to raise the orbit of the agency’s Swift gamma-ray observatory, citing attitude control problems with the spacecraft. The company announced on August 20 that it had concluded, in consultation with NASA, that its Link spacecraft will not attempt to catch … Read more
NASA has released images of a new crater on the moon after part of a rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX crashed into its surface this month. The upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon on August 5 at about 5,400 mph, after spending more than a year in space.
This image plots the orbital paths of all known stars orbiting the enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way. One of the stars, S301, comes very close to the black hole. At its closest point, the star travels at more than 15,000 miles per second. Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics hide … Read more
Entanglement is one of the best tricks in the magic box of quantum physics: two particles that are inextricably linked when measured, a key component of potential advances in computing, communication and sensing technologies. Scientists have a variety of methods to create entangled particles, often using light particles (photons). The standard way to entangle photons … Read more
Astronomers have discovered an unusually massive and dense exoplanet that challenges conventional ideas about how rocky planets form. Called GJ 523b, the exoplanet is about 2.5 times wider than Earth, but has about 23 times the mass of our planet in that relatively compact size. Worlds this large and dense are sometimes called “mega-Earths,” an … Read more
On Sable Island, a thin crescent of windswept sand about 300 kilometers off the coast of Nova Scotia, several hundred wild horses live without predators, without veterinary care and without any human control over who breeds with whom. Researchers at the University of Calgary, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Exeter have spent … Read more