Category Astronomy/Space

Using India’s AstroSat spacecraft, astronomers have investigated a central field of a cluster of galaxies known as the Coma cluster. Results of the study, presented in a paper published September 13 on arXiv.org, deliver important insights into the properties and nature of this galaxy cluster.

Galaxy clusters contain up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They are the largest known gravitationally bound structures in the universe, and could serve as excellent laboratories for studying galaxy evolution and cosmology.

At a distance of about 321 million light ...

The search for extraterrestrial life has just become more interesting as a team of scientists, including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein, has discovered new evidence for a key building block for life in the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. New modeling indicates that Enceladus’s ocean should be relatively rich in dissolved phosphorus, an essential ingredient for life.

“Enceladus is one of the prime targets in humanity’s search for life in our solar system,” said Glein, a leading expert in extraterrestrial oceanography...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured its first images and spectra of Mars Sept. 5. The telescope, an international collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), provides a unique perspective with its infrared sensitivity on our neighboring planet, complementing data being collected by orbiters, rovers, and other telescopes.

Webb’s unique observation post nearly a million miles away at the sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2) provides a view of Mars’s observable disk (the portion of the sunlit side that is facing the telescope)...

As NASA prepares to usher in a new form of planetary defense, one Johns Hopkins engineer will be eagerly awaiting the big collision that she is helping orchestrate.

Elena Adams, the mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and her team will spend the next two weeks carefully observing Didymos, a double-asteroid system that poses no threat to Earth and yet will be the target of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test—a first-of-its-kind, proof-of-concept mission that will intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid’s moonlet to deflect it away from its course.

“During the day of impact, I’ll be more of a conductor, making sure that all of the orchestra is following the beat and playing their parts,” said Adams, who will discuss the mission...