NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has an “unexpected traveling companion” in the form of a pet rock. The agency announced at the beginning of the month that “Percy” has carried the object over the past four months. Over 100 Martian days, or sols, ago – in early February – the rock wiggled onto the rover’s front…
The James Webb Space Telescope sustained a dust-sized micrometeoroid impact to a primary mirror segment. The impact occurred between May 23 and 25. NASA assured that the $10 billion telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements, despite a “marginally detectable effect in the data.” While further analysis and measurements are…
Five naked-eye planets are visible throughout the month of June, according to reports. Sky & Telescope magazine, a publication by the American Astronomical Society, says that viewers can see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – in their natural order from the sun – throughout the month, with Mercury easier to spot later on. The…
The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the grand design spiral, NGC 3631. The spiral galaxy is located some 53 million light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. In the photo, the “arms” of the grand design spiral appear to wind around the galaxy’s nucleus. “Close inspection of NGC…
The air-and-space on June 13-14. This year, it’s a supermoon, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The publication said that it will reach peak illumination at 7:52 a.m. EDT, or 11:52 UTC, on June 14. In North or South America, EarthSky notes, the fullest moon hangs in the West before sunrise on the 14th. NASA…
China has prepared to start world-regions, but any serious competition with the U.S. for the precious minerals remains a distant challenge. “The current prospect of mining the moon in any kind of financially remunerative way is just about zero,” Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow for Chinese Political & Military Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, told…
Satellite images from NASA have captured the underwater eruption of the Kavachi Volcano in the Pacific Ocean’s Solomon Islands. One of the most active submarine volcanoes in the ocean, scientists found in a 2015 expedition to the volcano that there were two species of sharks living in what has been dubbed a “Sharkcano.” Hammerheads reside…
A possible meteor shower is forecast to peak on Memorial Day. The tau Herculid shower is predicted to peak on the evening of Monday, May 30 and the early morning of May 31. Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said May marked a perfect opportunity for space…
NASA announced Thursday that its Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has calibrated more than 40 “milepost markers” of space and time. The mile markers help scientists measure the expansion rate of the universe and astronomers have found – using data from the HST and other telescopes – a discrepancy between the expansion rate as measured in…
NASA’s Voyager 1 has a strange system data issue. According to the agency, while the spacecraft is continuing to return science data, readouts from the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don’t reflect what’s actually happening onboard the interstellar explorer. NASA’S INSIGHT MARS LANDER’S POWER DIMINISHING, HAS MONTHS LEFT air-and-space which air-and-space” target=”_blank”>built both…