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Scientists suspect there’s ice hiding on the Moon
Some dark craters on the Moon, indicated here in blue, never get light. Scientists think some of these permanently shadowed regions could contain ice. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Building a space station on the Moon might seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but each new lunar mission is bringing that idea…
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Life’s Building Blocks Could Be Seeded By “Bouncing” Comets
The building blocks of life have been found on comets, asteroids, and in interstellar space. But how they end up on the surface of planets is not exactly clear. One idea is that comets and asteroids can ferry these molecules to worlds where life can emerge, but they need to travel relatively slowly for molecules to…
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Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Just Keeps Getting Smaller
NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this portrait of Jupiter’s colorful and enigmatic Great Red Spot in 2017. Its color is still something of a mystery and may arise when solar ultraviolet (UV) light breaks down atmospheric ammonia in the presence of acetylene into red-hued compounds. Since the Spot rises about 8 kilometers (5 miles) above the…
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Mars probe sees Red Planet atmosphere glowing green at night
Mars might be the Red Planet, but its atmosphere glows green. Using the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), scientists have observed Mars’ atmosphere glowing green for the first time ever — in the visible light spectrum, that is. The effect is called airglow (or dayglow or nightglow, depending on the hour), and…
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GSOA releases space sustainability conduct code
GSOA releases code of conduct on Space Sustainability. Credit GSOA London, 15 November 2023.- The Global Satellite Operators Association (GSOA) released on the 13th of November its Code of Conduct on Space Sustainability. It is calling on operators to implement responsible practices that: mitigate the risk of in-orbit collision, minimise the threat of non-trackable debris,…
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Can technology save astronomy from light pollution?
For nearly all of human history, once the Sun went down and the sky darkened, so long as you had a clear, moonless night, you’d be greeted with a spectacular, thrilling night sky: with thousands of stars, a clear view of the Milky Way, and several faint, fuzzy nebulae all visible to your naked eye.…
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Webb Telescope’s Marcia Rieke awarded Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal
image: Marcia Rieke, Regents’ Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona and principal investigator for the near-infrared camera on the James Webb Space Telescope. view more Credit: Credit: George Rieke / UAZ Dr. Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the Near-Infrared Camera on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s (ASP) 2023 recipient of…
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Comets that ‘bounce’ from planet to planet could spread life across the universe
Scientists suspect that comets may have delivered the organic ingredients necessary to cook up life on Earth, and new research shows how exoplanets could have received these special deliveries from comets, too. In its early history, Earth was bombarded with impacts from asteroids, comets and other cosmic bodies leftover from the formation of the solar…
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‘Bouncing’ comets may be delivering the seeds of life to alien planets, new study finds
The origin of life is one of the greatest scientific mysteries in the universe. Currently, there are two prevailing theories as to how it happened on Earth: The ingredients for life emerged from a primordial soup on our planet, or the molecules necessary for life were “seeded” here from elsewhere in the cosmos. With the…
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Mysterious ‘Tasmanian devil’ space explosion baffles astronomers
An artist’s impression of an LFBOT explosion.Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF An explosion in space nicknamed the Tasmanian devil has confused astronomers by flashing at peak brightness more than a dozen times, months after the initial event. The observation, while posing new questions, could help to narrow down what might cause such explosions, which are known…
