Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments. A new analysis of seismic data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission has uncovered a couple of big surprises. The first surprise: the top 300 meters (1000 feet) of the subsurface beneath the landing site near the Martian equator contains little or no ice.
With the technological advances in telescope instrumentation and software capabilities, it became necessary to streamline the observation process.
Over its 23-year lifetime, the station has been an important example of how Russia and the United States can work together despite being former adversaries. This cooperation has been especially significant as the countries’ relationship has deteriorated in recent years. While it remains unclear whether the Russians will follow through with this announcement, it does add significant stress to the operation of the most successful international cooperation in space ever. As a scholar who studies space policy, I think the question now is whether the political relationship has gotten so bad that working together in space has become impossible.
Russia operates six of the 17 modules of the ISS — including Zvezda, which houses the main engine system. This engine is vital to the station’s ability to remain in orbit and also to how it moves out of the way of dangerous space debris. Under the ISS agreements, Russia retains full control and legal authority over its modules.
It is currently unclear how Russia’s withdrawal will play out. Russia’s announcement speaks only to “after 2024.” Additionally, Russia did not say whether it would allow the ISS partners to take control of the Russian modules and continue to operate the station or whether it would require that the modules be shut down completely.
Iron will be key to human self-sufficiency on Mars.
When the first humans reach Mars, they’ll probably live in habitats that were there ahead of time or in habitats made from their landers.
The discovery of a super-Earth around the red dwarf Ross 508 is reported by astronomers in Japan. Part of the planet’s elliptical orbit takes it within the star’s habitable zone, where liquid water may exist.
A new study corrects an important error in the 3D mathematical space developed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger and others, and used by scientists and industry for more than 100 years to describe how your eye distinguishes one color from another. The research has the potential to boost scientific data visualizations, improve TVs and recalibrate the textile and paint industries.
“The assumed shape of color space requires a paradigm shift,” said Roxana Bujack, a computer scientist with a background in mathematics who creates scientific visualizations at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Bujack is lead author of the paper by a Los Alamos team in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the mathematics of color perception.
The Perseid meteor shower will peak this year in the early hours of 13 August. A full moon will make it trickier to see than usual but it is still worth a try — here’s how.
Using a robot confined to a sphere, scientists have proven bodies can move freely in curved spaces without pushing against anything.
The two spiral galaxies are about 60 million light-years from Earth.
Astronomers at the Gemini North telescope in Hawai’i have released a stunning image that shows two spiral galaxies in the process of colliding and merging.
The clashing galaxies NGC 4,568 and NGC 4,567 — also known as the Butterfly galaxies due to the dual-lobed shape their interaction causes — are located 60 million light-years away from Earth in the Virgo Cluster and will form a brand new elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years, according to a statement from NOIRLab, which operates the Gemini North telescope.
