We went into our respective cancer treatments. Amaey did indeed become confined in isolation after his irradiation and transplant—but I heard from his teacher Leslie that from his room he was keeping himself busy exploring the Moon, counting craters with MoonZoo, and classifying galaxies with GalaxyZoo. Even though Amaey was physically confined to his room, his intellect and curiosity … Read more
Both these images from a camera called StowCam aboard OSIRIS-APEX show the same view taken six months apart, before (left) and after (right) the Jan. 2, 2024, perihelion. Notably, there is no observable difference on spacecraft surfaces, a good indication that the higher temperatures faced during perihelion didn’t alter the spacecraft. Another insight gleaned from … Read more
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The … Read more
The horizon of Mars showing water-ice and dust in the atmosphere, as seen by the NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission on May 9, 2023. To find layers of ice and dust like these in Mars’s atmosphere, participants in the Cloudspotting on Mars project analyze data from a different infrared instrument, the Mars Climate Sounder on the … Read more
Living creatures produce most of the methane on Earth. But scientists haven’t found convincing signs of current or ancient life on Mars, and thus didn’t expect to find methane there. Yet, the portable chemistry lab aboard Curiosity, known as SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars, has continually sniffed out traces of the gas near the … Read more
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin … Read more
Assuming you can find a place with clear skies near the centerline of this swath, this eclipse, in particular, should be quite a show. Compared to the eclipse in 2017, the Moon will be nearer its closest to the Earth, making its shadow larger, the sky darker, and the eclipse longer. In addition, the Sun … Read more
05 Ceres Ceres is the smallest dwarf planet with an equatorial diameter of about 599 miles (about 964 kilometers). Ceres is about 1/13 the width of Earth. The closest dwarf planet to the Sun, Ceres orbits the Sun from an average distance of 257 million miles (413 million kilometers), and it’s about 2.8 times farther … Read more
4 min read ESA, NASA Solar Observatory Discovers Its 5,000th Comet On March 25, 2024, a citizen scientist in the Czech Republic spotted a comet in an image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which has now been confirmed to be the 5,000th comet discovered using SOHO data. SOHO has achieved this milestone … Read more
[left image] – Big enough to swallow Earth, the classic Great Red Spot stands out prominently in Jupiter’s atmosphere. To its lower right, at a more southerly latitude, is a feature sometimes dubbed Red Spot Jr. This anticyclone was the result of storms merging in 1998 and 2000, and it first appeared red in 2006 before returning … Read more