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Neil Armstrong: 1930-2012. This is not something I wanted to write down – and I feel extremely sad and awkward doing it. The man who took the first step on the Moon died due to a heart condition. The American hero, 82 years old, who never dwelled on his success, and never tried to milk […]
The sun has been extensively studied by astronomers for the last 50 years. While previous research suggested that the the sun is slightly sun bulged a bit around the middle , making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped, new measurements however taken by a satellite suggest that its shape is the closest to that of a perfect […]
According to recent findings as a result of observations from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), it seems like the moon’s pale atmosphere contains helium, a fact in question for some forty years since the first hints were discovered on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions. The moon is often considered not to have an […]
Since it landed, the Mars Science Laboratory mission has offered a series of premieres for space exploration like the first-ever panorama of Gale Crater, the first measurements of high energy radiation on another planet, the first movie of a spacecraft landing on another planet, the first images from a focusable camera on another planet or first images […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is really getting down to business, sending spectacular pictures back to Earth – including a colour panoramic image of the Gale Crater landing site. During a press conference, NASA officials announced the pictures are not only spectacular themselves, but also crucial to understanding the Martian landscape. “The Navcam and Mastcam images have […]
Researchers have found evidence that the crater in case was formed when the ground was slammed by a massive meteorite, millions of years ago. Prince Albert crater Measuring about 25 kilometers across, Prince Albert crater was named after the peninsula in which it was discovered. Researchers never were really sure when it was formed, the […]
Ok, enough of the low-res, black and white photos from Curiosity. NASA just released the first high-resolution, nearly dust free, photograph taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars. The image was taken by the rovers’ Navigation Cameras (NavCams), which are capable of photographing at 1megapixel, depicting a flat Martian landscape with the looming rim of […]
Previously, we shared the largest and, respectively, most detailed 3-D maps of the Universe released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Now the survey has released a new, massive update to the map, again, making it the largest 3-D map of the Universe, which pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. Were you […]
Strap on your 3-D glasses, folks. Curiosity is back on ZME Science, this time in full 3-D. We just got ahold of two extraordinary three-dimensional photos, taken by the car-sized rover on Mars by combining images from the robot’s navigation cameras, which operate in pairs to provide stereo views of the Martian surface.
Hope you’re all not too bored by the influx of Curiosity we’ve been feeding these past few days. We believe this to be one of the most significant scientific events of the year, topped maybe just by the discovery of the Higgs boson, and as such the rover’s landing on martian soil deserves at least […]
The video captures the thrilling final few minutes of the Curiosity rover’s white-knuckle ride as it descended towards the surface of Mars, where it will hopefully provide valuable information about the Red Planet’s history. You shouldn’t expect a fantastic hi-res video, because the rover’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) only has a low-resolution camera. During the […]
Amazing photo: the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took one of the best space pictures of the decade – Curiosity descending to Mars, using its parachutes. As you can see, the rover is safely descending inside its backshell, suspended from its huge parachute; the picture was taken just as the rover was deccelerating […]
Curiosity has landed. The Mars Science Laboratory is set to go, and today, we’ll be writing tons of posts about it: videos, pics, facts, etc – given that it is, without a doubt the most important accomplishment of the year in space exploration. Unlike Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity doesn’t use solar panels as an energy […]
Yes, Curiosity has landed! And like we’ve reported earlier, right after the rover landed on the martian surface, it beamed back its first images to Earth to confirm the successful touchdown. The images took 14 minutes to reach scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where the whole Mars rover operation is being coordinated. […]
At precisely 10:32 p.m. Pacific time (1:32 a.m. EDT/0530 GMT), today, August 6, NASA’s Curiosity Rover touched down on martian soil flawlessly, finally putting an end to tight nerves and angst which enveloped the agency’s staff, and space exploration enthusiasts from around the globe alike. The landing marks a new milestone for NASA and human space […]
Stars suffer, too, you know. Astronomers have recently discovered a distinctive X-ray signal coming from a star on the verge of being engulfed by a black hole in a distant galaxy. “This tell-tale signal, called a quasi-periodic oscillation or QPO, is a characteristic feature of the accretion disks that often surround the most compact objects […]
The Mars landing isn’t an easy feat, even if you’re NASA; the car-sized Curiosity roverch is on its way to fulfilling the two year $2.5 billion project it embarked on: finding out whether Mars has, or had at any time in its existence, life forms. The rover has been traveling 8 months and a half, […]
The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile is back with yet another stunning gem. This spectacular spiral galaxy has hosted two supernova explosions over the last 30 years, making it particularly interesting. Supernovae are one of the brightest and most energetic events in the Universe. The galaxy’s name is NGC 1187, and is […]
Both Boeing and SpaceX are set to split as much as $1 billion in federal awards destined to spur development of next-generation manned spacecraft. This follows other funding ventures awarded in the past few years to private space companies, in NASA‘s attempt to delimit itself from suborbital ventures, so that it may concentrate on deep […]
With the Mars rover Curiosity due to land this weekend, it can be a real drag following NASA’s everyday lingo, which sometimes seems to resemble Martian more than English. Processes have nicknames, parts have nicknames or acronyms, and if you want to know if MSL will nail the EDL for example, you have to learn […]
I have to admit this one caught me off-guard: Mount Sharp, the destination for the new Mars Rover is at the center of a minor naming confusion: its official name isn’t actually Mount Sharp. As of today only three days remain until the much expected land, and I was just reading some details about Curiosity […]
Scientists from the world’s largest democracy, and 2nd most populated country in the world, India, announced a most ambitious mission set for next year: they want to send a probe to the red planet to study its climate and geology. India and China are now preparing for two major space missions that could put the […]
Ok, it’s not actually blue, but this is what two full moons occurring in the same calendar month are commonly referred to. This month of August, the skies will be blessed with not one, but two full moons, the first on Aug. 1 and the second on Aug. 31 – don’t mean burst your bubble […]
China is set on covering a lot of lost ground in its race of becoming a full fledged space super power, and its progress so far has been phenomenal. The latest news from the Chinese space agency comes in the wake of a successful test for a super-rocket engine, which will be deployed in the […]
As we count the days to the expected Curiosty land, let’s take a while to understand just what it will do, at least from a chemical point of view. Curiosity, the new Mars rover, is practically a laboratory on wheels, equipped with instruments to analyze soil samples from the red planet to test for microbial […]
For people of the Northern Hemisphere (North America, Europe, Asia and a healthy chunk of Africa), late July and August is usually meteor viewing season; usually, the most spectacular displays take place during mid August – the Perseids, of course. This year, 2012, will be a fairly good but not spectacular one for meteor showers, […]
Just last week, man’s first step on the moon turned 43 years. Uncoincidently, maybe, NASA announced recently that its Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured conclusive images to show that almost all American flags hung by astronauts on the moon are still in their rightful place, undisturbed. Maybe only withered. The images aren’t very clear, […]
Planetary scientist Kelsi Singer initially studied satellite photographs of Saturn’s icy moon Iapetus’ surface looking for stress fractures in the moon’s ice, what she found in process however was far more interesting. Huge landslides, stretching across tens of miles across the moon’s surface were observed, not in one, but multiple locations, hinting this is a common phenomenon […]
A new research has found that the massively powerful O-type stars, which can be up to 90 times more powerful than our own sun, actually come in pairs most of the time, as a binary system. The two stars wrapper in this dance have a special kind of relationship developed with one another. Thus, one […]
Alright, the analogy might not be the best. The Large Hadron Collider is a high energy particle accelerator, while the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a state of the art particle detector, which traps high-energy charged particles called cosmic rays and analyzes them. You see, the AMS can practically perform the same functions as the LHC, only the high […]
Researchers at MIT, the University of California at Santa Cruz and other institutions have come across the first exoplanetary system, whose planets exhibit a regularly aligned orbit, after analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. So far, other discovered exoplanetary systems had planets, particularly hot-Jupiters, which presented far more eccentric orbits. Our solar system is comprised of eight […]
The 3D printing revolution is right around the corner. While we might still be a few years away from seeing such printers for home users at an affordable price, the technology has so far proven itself marvelously, whether we’re talking about jawbone implants, scale on scale mechanized dinosaur parts or extremely fine nanoscale objects. Yes, 3D printing […]
For the past couple of years NASA has been testing a new atmospheric re-entry system, designed to offer pods and capsules more stability and better degree of safety upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Just yesterday, the latest, the Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3), was launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia for its 20-minute test, which […]
In a remarkable discovery, astronomers have found the oldest spiral galaxy to our knowledge – a three-armed spiral galaxy dating back nearly 11 billion years. It precedes any other previous record holder by about 2 billion years, basically sweeping away the competition. The spiral galaxy is so amazing that it caught astronomers completely by surprise, and […]
Astronomers have surprised a blast of charged solar particles erupting from a massive solarspot, recently. The unleashed X-class solar flare is expected to reach Earth’s magnetic field on Saturday morning (2:52 p.m. EDT). Scientists warrant that there’s a chance temporary disruptions to GPS signals, radio communications and power grids might occur. Of greater interest for most of […]
Exactly 50 years ago, on July 12 1962, the the world’s first active communications satellite, Telstar 1, transmitted the first live television signal by satellite. During this historic day, a live television program was for the first time beamed across the Atlantic in Europe, an event saluted by the people of the time as a technological […]
Astronomers have discovered a new moon orbiting the dwarf planet of Pluto – its fifth – only a year after the former planet’s forth satellite was discovered. In the past decade alone, four out of Pluto’s five moons known thus far have been discovered. The latest addition, provisionally titled S/2012 (134340) 1 or P5, is only between 6 […]
In 2010, a NASA study published in the journal Science heralded the discovery of a bacteria, called GFAJ-1, which the authors at the time claimed it substitutes arsenic for phosphorus to survive. This contravened with the elemental recipe for life, where phosphorus is essential, stirring a wave of controversy within scientific community, as it would mandate a […]
An international team of astronomers may have come across the first sound evidence testifying the existence of dark galaxies – cosmic bodies from the early Universe long theorized by scientists in the past, but never before confirmed until now. Dark galaxies are small, gas-rich galaxies that are very inefficient at forming stars themselves. Their name comes […]
There are millions of asteroids currently residing in our Solar System, of which some 500 thousand orbit in the inner solar system, where our planet also lies. Space agencies in the world have only mapped so far a mere 1% of these. Clearly, an asteroid impact with Earth poses a serious and realistic threat to […]
Last year, we reported on this incredible study from NASA scientists, where the possibility of a vast ocean of water beneath the surface of Titan, one of Saturn’s moon, was discussed. The study was in its incipient form, and now researchers have released a new report in which they conclude it’s very much likely that a huge […]
It’s remarkably impressive how a spacecraft built and launched in the late 70’s is not only still functional, but well on its way of becoming the first man-made object to leave our solar system. After 35 years, new data shows that this plucky probe may soon cross the undulating boundary between the edge of our solar […]
Kepler, a space telescope on a mission to find alien planets by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, has come across a fantastic discovery. Two planets orbiting a distant star, which are closer to one another than any other two planets discovered thus far. Apparently, from the surface of the smaller planet, […]
Scientists at MIT, Brown University, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center may have come across an incredible discovery, after data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a spacecraft which orbits the Moon from pole to pole, suggests water ice might be present inside a massive crater, called the Shackleton crater. The researchers used the spacecraft’s laser altimeter to illuminate the crater’s interior with […]
Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the Universe. Their formed after black holes devour captured material, like gas dust and stars that come too close, and release bright light that can be seen across the universe. Most of the popular astronomy today is orientated towards the particularly extremely bright quasars; those formed in a singular […]
This Monday, China took a historic step forward after the nation’s manned spacecraft Shenzhou-9 successfully docked the Tiangong 1 space station test platform. This marks the first time a Chinese mission crew docks with a space platform. Also, another unprecedented event occurred – the first ever female Chinese astronaut to travel in space. The Shenzhou-9 capsule was launched […]
In the summer of 2011, Swedish marine explorers looking for various goods from shipwrecks, which sank in the Baltic Sea a long time ago, came across a peculiar discovery. The Swedish treasure hunters’ sonar revealed an extraordinary image: a formation of objects at the bottom of the sea that bears an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars’ fabled Millennium Falcon. One […]
A huge asteroid will make a ‘cosmic brush’ on Earth, closing in on our planet at a distance of only a few million kilometers. The massive asteroid, named 2012 LZ1, will buzz Earth Thursday, and amateur astronomers without any equipment can watch the flyby on the Slooh Space Camera’s website. It will be a close […]
I recently told you a few days ago China was planning its first ever space docking, and one of the astronauts will definitely be a woman – first they nailed it down to two, but now, Chinese officials have made their decision: Liu Yang will be their first female astronaut ever! Liu will be one of […]
The most sophisticated rover developed by NASA to date, the Mars Curiosity rover, is set to land on the red planet in August. During its one year mission, the rover’s main objective is that of investigating for signs that might hint towards the presence of life, past or present, on Mars. Scientists have unanimously agreed […]
