NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope spotted a rare, medium-size “hot Neptune” planet in a solar system far beyond our own. Why are there so few exoplanets of this size? Some clues: the planet orbits very close to a young star, and its atmosphere is evaporating rapidly from the blistering radiation. https://go.nasa.gov/2rBCwW4
The Kings played moon landing footage during Warriors’ intros and Steph loved it 😂 (via NBCS Bay Area)
Posted by What. If.
Virgin Galactic just brought human spaceflight back to American soil after a seven-year hiatus, and other private companies are poised to make some giant leaps of their own.
Virgin’s VSS Unity suborbital spaceliner soared to a maximum altitude of 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers) during a rocket-powered test flight over California’s Mojave Desert yesterday (Dec. 13).
The milestone marked the first U.S.-based crewed trip to the final frontier since NASA grounded its space shuttle fleet in July 2011. And it was the first spaceflight ever by a private vehicle designed to carry commercial passengers. (By one measure, anyway: Though many people place the boundary of outer space 62 miles, or 100 km, up at the “Karman Line,” the U.S. Air Force awards astronaut wings to personnel who reach an altitude of 50 miles, or 80 km.) [In Photos: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity Soars to Space].
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may not have managed to spot InSight under its parachute, but it has finally spotted the lander, its parachute, and its heat shield resting on the Martian surface. The images confirm the location of InSight’s landing site, a little to the north and west of the center of the landing ellipse.
First, the fantastic hardware images:
There will be no New Year’s Eve revelry for those working on NASA’s New Horizon’s space probe. They will need to be stone cold sober with their wits about them when, on New Year’s Day 2019, it whizzes past one of the fossil building blocks of the planets and one of the most primitive bodies in the Solar System.
NASA’s newly arrived Mars lander has been spotted by one its orbiting cousins.
The space agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its supersharp High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to photograph the InSight lander, as well as the hardware that helped the stationary robot ace its Nov. 26 touchdown on the equatorial plain known as Elysium Planitia.
“It looks like the heat shield (upper right) has its dark outside facing down, since it is so bright (saturated, probably a specular reflection),” HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona, wrote in an image description today (Dec. 13). [Mars InSight in Photos: NASA’s Mission to Probe Core of the Red Planet].
Thinking of trying something new today? How does “discovering new planets while sitting comfortably at home” sound? Learn how ordinary citizens can make a WORLD of difference in the ongoing hunt for exoplanets.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to discover new planets? Learn how Planet Hunters TESS shows us how to find new worlds far away from our Sun.