If Breakthrough Starshot is tackling the question of velocities at a substantial percentage of lightspeed, what do we do about the payload question? A chip-sized spacecraft is challenging in terms of instrumentation and communications, not to mention power. Enter Jeff Greason’s Q-Drive, with an entirely different take on high velocity missions within the Solar System […]
New LIGO Events Demolish The Idea Of A ‘Mass Gap’ Between Neutron Stars And Black Holes
On Monday, March 16, 2020, astrophysicist Carl Rodriguez expressed a sentiment echoed by gravitational wave physicists all across the world: NOT NOW LIGO! Just minutes earlier, the LIGO collaboration sent out an alert suggesting that it had just detected another gravitational wave event, the 56th candidate detection since starting up its latest data-taking run in […]
ULA’s Atlas V Completes First National Security Space Launch for U.S. Space Force
An Atlas V rocket carrying the AEHF-6 mission for the U.S Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at 4:18 p.m. EDT on March 26, 2020. (Credit: United Launch Alliance) Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., March 26, 2020 (ULA PR) – A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket […]
Heart, Eye Studies in Space as Next Crew Nears Launch
NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan retrieves gut microbe samples from a science freezer for an experiment to understand how microgravity affects microbes that impact astronaut health. Cardiac research and 3D bioprinting aboard the International Space Station today are helping NASA improve health for humans in space and on Earth. The three Expedition 62 crewmembers also participated […]
Highest Resolution Mosaic Image of the Surface of Bennu
NASA and the University of Arizona have released a stunning new global map of asteroid Bennu. At 2 inches (5 cm) per pixel, this is the highest-resolution global map of any planetary body. This hi-res map will help guide the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to the surface of the asteroid to collect a sample, currently scheduled for […]
Octonary stars and 'Broken Pieces': Can the eight-star system from Star Trek: Picard actually exist?
When we look out into the the final frontier, we suffer from an illusion imposed by distance: The stars look like single dots, points of light against the black. But roughly half those stars are in fact multiple stars: binaries, trinaries, and even more stars orbiting around each other. From our vantage point of hundreds […]
Future space telescopes may probe Titan-like exoplanets
Saturn’s huge moon Titan is one of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system. Titan boasts hydrocarbon rivers and seas that could potentially harbor “strange life,” as well as a subsurface ocean of liquid water where Earth-like organisms might be able to make a living. Titan also has a thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere where complex […]
Top 5 Nearest and Habitable Exoplanets
<img data-attachment-id="4328" data-permalink="https://penningtonplanetarium.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/top-5-nearest-and-habitable-exoplanets/exoplanets/#main" data-orig-file="https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg" data-orig-size="1280,720" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="exoplanets" data-image-description=" top five nearest habitable exoplanets ” data-medium-file=”https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=620″ class=”aligncenter wp-image-4328 size-medium” src=”https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=300&h=169″ alt width=”300″ height=”169″ srcset=”https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=300&h=169 300w, https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=600&h=338 600w, https://penningtonplanetarium.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/exoplanets.jpg?w=150&h=84 150w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px”> Back in 1995, astronomers had detected a planet orbiting around a Sun-like star. This was a huge deal. And today, we […]
Interstellar Travel with Sailing (Space) Ships
Title: Propulsion of Spacecrafts to Relativistic Speeds Using Natural Astrophysical Sources Authors: Manasvi Lingam, and Abraham Loeb First Author’s Institution: Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Science, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, USA and Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA Status: accepted for publication in ApJ Travelling to distant stars is one […]
How Researchers Produce Sharp Images of a Black Hole
In April of 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration history made history when it released the first image of a black hole ever taken. This accomplishment was decades in the making and triggered an international media circus. The picture was the result of a technique known as interferometry, where observatories across the world combined light […]