Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago. The team has nicknamed the object Tayna, which means “first-born” in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes…
NASA Plans Twin Sounding Rocket Launches Over Norway This Winter
This winter, two sounding rockets will launch through the aurora borealis over Norway to study how particles move in a region near the North Pole where Earth’s magnetic field is directly connected to the solar wind. After the launch window opens on Nov. 27, 2015, the CAPER and RENU 2 rockets will have to wait…
NASA’s Fermi Satellite Detects First Gamma-Ray Pulsar In Another Galaxy
Researchers using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in a galaxy other than our own. The object sets a new record for the most luminous gamma-ray pulsar known. The pulsar lies in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our Milky…
NASA’s Swift Spots Its Thousandth Gamma-Ray Burst
NASA’s Swift spacecraft has detected its 1,000th gamma-ray burst (GRB). GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the universe, typically associated with the collapse of a massive star and the birth of a black hole. “Detecting GRBs is Swift’s bread and butter, and we’re now at 1,000 and counting,” said Neil Gehrels, the Swift principal…
Out With The Old, In With The New: Telescope Mirrors Get New Shape
Telescope mirrors of old basically came in one shape: they were round and fit nicely inside a tube. No longer. An emerging optics technology now allows these light-gathering devices to take almost any shape, potentially providing improved image quality over a larger field of view — all in a smaller package. Called freeform optics, this…
Hubble Uncovers The Fading Cinders Of Some Of Our Galaxy’s Earliest Homesteaders
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to conduct a “cosmic archaeological dig” at the very heart of our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have uncovered the blueprints of our galaxy’s early construction phase. Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, Hubble researchers have uncovered for the first time a population of ancient white…
Spirals In Dust Around Young Stars May Betray Presence Of Massive Planets
A team of astronomers is proposing that huge spiral patterns seen around some newborn stars, merely a few million years old (about one percent our sun’s age), may be evidence for the presence of giant unseen planets. This idea not only opens the door to a new method of planet detection, but also could offer…
NASA Study Reveals Origin Of Organic Matter In Apollo Lunar Samples
A team of NASA-funded scientists has solved an enduring mystery from the Apollo missions to the moon – the origin of organic matter found in lunar samples returned to Earth. Samples of the lunar soil brought back by the Apollo astronauts contain low levels of organic matter in the form of amino acids. Certain amino…
NASA Investigates Techniques For Cooling 3-D Integrated Circuits Stacked Like A Skyscraper
Future integrated circuitry is expected to look a lot like skyscrapers: units will be stacked atop one another and interconnects will link each level to its adjacent neighbors, much like how elevators connect one floor to the next. The problem is how do integrated-circuit designers remove heat from these tightly packed 3-D chips? The smaller…
Researchers Catch Comet Lovejoy Giving Away Alcohol
NASA Study Shows That Common Coolants Contribute To Ozone Depletion
A class of widely used chemical coolants known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) contributes to ozone depletion by a small but measurable amount, countering a decades-old assumption, according to a new NASA study. The paper, published Oct. 22 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, is based on the results of a NASA-derived…
Most Earth-Like Worlds Have Yet To Be Born, According To Theoretical Study
Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won’t be over when the sun burns out in another…
NASA’s Webb ‘Pathfinder Telescope’ Successfully Completes First Super-Cold Optical Test
Testing is crucial part of NASA’s success on Earth and in space. So, as the actual flight components of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope come together, engineers are testing the non-flight equipment to ensure that tests on the real Webb telescope later goes safely and according to plan. Recently, the “pathfinder telescope,” or just “Pathfinder,”…
Hubble’s Planetary Portrait Captures New Changes In Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
Mysterious Ripples Found Racing Through Planet-Forming Disk
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered never-before-seen features within the dusty disk surrounding the young, nearby star AU Microscopii (AU Mic).The fast-moving, wave-like structures are unlike anything ever observed, or even predicted in a circumstellar disk, said researchers of a new analysis.…
Cameras Delivered for OSIRIS-REx Mission as Launch Prep Continues
The first U.S. mission to return samples of an asteroid to Earth is another step closer to its fall 2016 launch, with the delivery of three cameras that will image and map the giant space rock. A camera suite that will allow NASA‘s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to see a…
NASA’s Webb Sunshield Gives an ‘Open Wide’ for Inspection
The sunshield on NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope is the largest part of the observatory – five layers of thin, silvery membrane that must unfurl reliably in space. The precision in which the tennis-court sized sunshield has to open must be no more than a few centimeters different from its planned position. In this photo,…
NASA Tech Helps Fight Forest Pests
Northeastern forests in the United States cover more than 165 million acres, an area almost as big as Texas. Soon, millions of pine and ash trees in those forests could be wiped out, thanks in part to two types of voracious insects–each smaller than a penny. Read more: NASA Gives the Go-Ahead to Experimental Black…
NASA Supercomputer Model Shows Planet Making Waves in Nearby Debris Disk
A new NASA supercomputer simulation of the planet and debris disk around the nearby star Beta Pictoris reveals that the planet’s motion drives spiral waves throughout the disk, a phenomenon that causes collisions among the orbiting debris. Patterns in the collisions and the resulting dust appear to account for many observed features that previous research…
NASA’s Hubble Sees a ‘Behemoth’ Bleeding Atmosphere Around a Warm Exoplanet
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed “The Behemoth” bleeding from a planet orbiting a nearby star. The enormous, comet-like feature is about 50 times the size of the parent star. The hydrogen is evaporating from a warm, Neptune-sized planet, due to extreme radiation from the star. This…
The Fearsome Foursome: Technologies Enable Ambitious MMS Mission
It was unprecedented developing a mission that could fly four identically equipped spacecraft in a tight formation and take measurements 100 times faster than any previous space mission — an achievement enabled in part by four NASA-developed technologies that in some cases took nearly 10 years to mature. “To get to this point in time,…
NASA-Funded Mission Studies the Sun in Soft X-Rays
At any given moment, our sun emits a range of light waves far more expansive than what our eyes alone can see: from visible light to extreme ultraviolet to soft and hard X-rays. Different wavelengths can have different effects at Earth and, what’s more, when observed and analyzed correctly, those wavelengths can provide scientists with…
NASA-Funded Mission Studies the Sun in Soft X-Rays
At any given moment, our sun emits a range of light waves far more expansive than what our eyes alone can see: from visible light to extreme ultraviolet to soft and hard X-rays. Different wavelengths can have different effects at Earth and, what’s more, when observed and analyzed correctly, those wavelengths can provide scientists with…
NASA Engineer Advances New Daytime Star Tracker
Scientists who use high-altitude scientific balloons have high hopes for their instruments in the future. Although the floating behemoths that carry their instruments far into the stratosphere can stay aloft for days on end, data collection typically happens during the night when starlight can be detected. The instruments that operate during the day are limited…
NOAA’s NISTAR Instrument Watches Earth’s ‘Budget’
The NISTAR instrument that will fly aboard NOAA‘s space weather-observing spacecraft called the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), is going to measure the Earth’s radiation budget. VIEW: Engineering Newswire 124: NISTAR Fights Global Warming NASA is flying two Earth science instruments aboard NOAA’s DSCOVR spacecraft. One of them is called the National Institute of Standards…