News – Page 77 – Astronomy Now

NASA hails now-departed Rossi X-ray observer

7 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, decommissioned in 2012, fell back into the atmosphere and burned up 30 April, finally bringing a remarkably successful mission to study black holes and neutron stars to a fiery end.

After foggy departure, it’s clear sailing to Mars for InSight lander

7 May 2018 Stephen Clark

Making a fiery climb into a foggy sky Saturday over California’s Central Coast, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket dispatched NASA’s InSight lander on a 301-million-mile voyage to Mars with a package of European-built instruments to probe the inside of the Red Planet.

Managers clear InSight for launch after heat shield review

3 May 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA officials have determined that the robotic InSight lander is ready for its mission to Mars after concluding that the probe should not suffer the same flaw that led to a crack in a heat shield undergoing tests for the space agency’s Mars 2020 rover.

Stephen Hawking’s final thoughts about the big bang

2 May 2018 Astronomy Now

In a paper billed as Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the origin of the universe, the famed physicist and co-author Thomas Hertog argue that the widely held concept of “eternal inflation” is incorrect.

Old IMAX projectors simulate Sun in key test for Parker Solar Probe

1 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Scientists used four vintage IMAX projectors to simulate the blazing light from the Sun that a key instrument on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will experience when flying closer to Earth’s star than any other spacecraft.

Hubble spots surviving companion to a supernova

26 April 2018 William Harwood

For the first time, the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the surviving companion of a star that exploded in a supernova blast 17 years ago, evidence that supernovas can originate in binary star systems.

With luck, James Webb may spot first-generation stars

26 April 2018 Astronomy Now

With gravitational lensing, patience and a bit of luck, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may be able to directly image some of the first stars to light up in the wake of the big bang birth of the universe.

Uranus stinks. No, really, it does

26 April 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using a powerful spectrometer attached one of the world’s largest telescopes have discovered that Uranus smells like rotten eggs thanks to hydrogen sulphide in its upper atmosphere.

NASA’s new planet-hunting satellite begins climb into science orbit

25 April 2018 Stephen Clark

Looping back near Earth for the first time since its launch one week ago, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite fired its thrusters early Wednesday to begin boosting its orbit toward the moon for a May 17 gravity assist maneuver that will help catapult the probe into its unique science orbit.

Gaia data pins down 1.7 billion suns in most detailed star catalogue ever

25 April 2018 Astronomy Now

The second data release from the European Space Agency’s hard-working Gaia spacecraft reveals the position and brightness of nearly 1.7 billion stars in the most detailed star catalogue ever developed.