A Stellar Collision Birthed the ‘Dragon’s Egg’ Nebula, a Puzzling Structure in the Milky Way

The colorful cloud of gas and dust has a violent origin—and this explains the unusual traits of two massive stars within it, astronomers saySome 3,800 light-years away from Earth, in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Norma, lies a massive cloud of gas and dust. Nicknamed the “Dragon’s Egg” nebula for its proximity to the Fighting Dragons of Ara nebula complex, this mysterious cosmic structure…

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Dragonfly mission set for Saturn's moon Titan with NASA's confirmed plan

NASA has officially given the greenlight for the Dragonfly rotorcraft mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, authorizing the project’s transition to final design and construction stages. This development follows the successful completion of the mission’s Preliminary Design Review and subsequent budget adjustments to align with the current financial landscape.“Dragonfly represents a major science…

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China gears up for Shenzhou XVIII manned space mission

The China Manned Space Agency has announced that the Shenzhou XVIII mission is poised for launch in the upcoming days, aiming to deliver three astronauts to the Tiangong space station.On Wednesday, the Shenzhou XVIII crew spacecraft, along with its Long March 2F rocket, was transferred to the service tower at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center located in the Gobi Desert of northwestern China.…

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The Current Mars Sample Return Mission isn’t Going to Work. NASA is Going Back to the Drawing Board

Human spaceflight is not the easiest of enterprises. NASA have let us know that their plans for the Mars Sample Return Mission have changed. The original plan was to work with ESA to collect samples from Perseverance and return them to Earth by 2031. Alas like many things, costs were increasing and timescales were slipping and with the budget challenges, NASA has had to rework their plan.…

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Cova do Vapor where the river joins the ocean

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NASA to Hoist Its Sail: Solar Sail Mission Gets Ready for Launch

A NASA mission testing a new way of navigating our solar system is ready to hoist its sail into space – not to catch the wind, but the propulsive power of sunlight. The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is targeting launch on Tuesday, April 23 (Wednesday, April 24 in New Zealand) aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New…

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A Rare Nova Explosion Will Soon Bring a ‘New Star’ to the Night Sky—How to Catch a Glimpse

In an event that occurs only once every 80 years, a distant remnant of a star will grow much brighter, briefly becoming visible to EarthAt some point during the next several months, a distant, dead star will rapidly grow brighter in a powerful explosion, making it visible from Earth for a short period of time. To observers on the ground, it will look like a new star.The dead star—which is…

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Are Titan's Dunes Made of Comet Dust?

A new theory suggests that Titan’s majestic dune fields may have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan’s dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric hydrocarbons. But researchers from the University of Colorado want to know: Could it have come from comets?The dunes of TitanWhen the Cassini spacecraft arrived in orbit around…

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Baby Stars Discharge “Sneezes” of Gas and Dust

I’m really not sure what to call it but a ‘dusty sneeze’ is probably as good as anything. We have known for some years that stars surround themselves with a disk of gas and dust known as the protostellar disk. The star interacts with it, occasionally discharging gas and dust regularly. Studying the magnetic fields revealed that they are weaker than expected. A new proposal suggests that the…

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Stellar Winds Coming From Other Stars Measured for the First Time

An international research team led by the University of Vienna has made a major breakthrough. In a study recently published in Nature Astronomy, they describe how they conducted the first direct measurements of stellar wind in three Sun-like star systems. Using X-ray emission data obtained by the ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror-Newton (XMM-Newton) of these stars’ “astrospheres,” they measured the mass…

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Astronauts slated for repair mission on space station's NICER telescope

NASA has scheduled a spacewalk to repair the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station, later this year. This marks the fourth instance of astronauts servicing a science observatory in orbit.In May 2023, the NICER team identified a significant issue-a light leak allowing sunlight to penetrate and affect the telescope’s sensitive…

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Artemis Astronauts Will Deploy New Seismometers on the Moon

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers to detect possible Moon quakes. These instruments monitored lunar activity for eight years and gave planetary scientists an indirect glimpse into the Moon’s interior. Now, researchers are developing new methods for lunar quake detection techniques and technologies. If all goes well, the Artemis astronauts…

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Astronomers Discover a ‘Sleeping Giant’ Black Hole in Our Galaxy—the Second-Closest Known to Earth

Called Gaia BH3, the dormant black hole is 33 times more massive than the sun, making it the largest recorded stellar black hole in the Milky WayLess than 2,000 light-years away from Earth, scientists have discovered a “sleeping giant”—the Milky Way’s largest stellar black hole, with a mass 33 times greater than that of our sun. Though the black hole, named Gaia BH3, is the second-closest known…

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NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test Begins Stacking Operations

NASA teams joined Boeing on April 16 to move the Starliner spacecraft out of the company’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the launch site.Technicians lifted and connected the spacecraft to the top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of NASA’s…

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Knot theory aids in mapping efficient space routes

Scientists at the University of Surrey have devised a method to chart the most efficient routes for spacecraft, mirroring the way drivers use sat-nav to navigate on Earth. This new technique harnesses mathematics to outline potential paths from one orbit to another, sidestepping the need for extensive computational resources or trial-and-error approaches.Danny Owen, from the Surrey Space Centre,…

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The Seven Most Amazing Discoveries We’ve Made by Exploring Mercury

Only two robotic missions have made it to the Swift Planet, but they were crucial for upending many false assumptions of that sun-scorched worldIt seems like Mercury, sitting so close to the sun, should already be a dead planet. Scientists thought the humble hunk of rock that’s only slightly girthier than Earth’s moon would have been battered to barrenness by the sun’s intense solar radiation.…

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Crucial building blocks of life on Earth can more easily form in outer space – new research

The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unravelling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms.It’s long been suspected that some of these ingredients may have been delivered from space. Now a new study, published in…

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