Etiket: NASA

Pluto may no longer be considered a true planet following its official reclassification in 2006, but that doesn’t appear to be stopping the tiny dwarf planet from amassing a considerable number of celestial “followers.” Just this week, in fact, a team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope announced their discovery of yet another moon…

Following the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, NASA’s most advanced Mars rover to date landed on the Red Planet at 10:32 p.m. PDT on Sunday. Dubbed “Curiosity,” the one-ton, car-sized rover had been in flight for 36 weeks. Its complicated touchdown — including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver…

Luke Skywalker’s fictional home planet Tatooine in the Star Wars films was perhaps most memorable for its two suns, but astronomers working on NASA’s Kepler mission recently discovered something much like it here in our own galaxy. An artist’s conception of the Kepler-47 binary star system The discovery — announced at a recent International Astronomical…

Astronomers have long suspected that Jupiter undergoes more frequent collisions with space objects than we know, but this past Monday one apparently occurred that was so dramatic as to even be visible with amateur telescopes here on Earth. Wisconsin-based amateur astronomer Dan Peterson first reportedthe event, having viewed it as it happened. Soon afterward, he…

The first resupply mission to the International Space Station conducted by a private firm is set to launch Sunday evening. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule made by SpaceX are scheduled to take off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 8:35 p.m. Eastern time. Ahead of the launch,…

One of the nine Merlin engines of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket suffered what the company called “an anomaly” after the vessel’s launch on Sunday. The “anomaly” looks a lot like one of the rocket’s nine engines failing in mid-launch, as can be seen in the slow-motion video below. Initial data suggest that Engine 1 lost…

Astronomers have wondered for centuries about the possibility of Earth-like planets in the neighboring Alpha Centauri star system, but only just recently did their ongoing search bear fruit. Specifically, in an announcement made last week, European astronomers said they have discovered a planet with about the mass of Earth orbiting a star in Alpha Centauri.…