Category Astronomy/Space

Results from NASA’s landmark Twins Study, which took place from 2015-2016, were published Thursday in Science. The integrated paper – encompassing work from 10 research teams – reveals some interesting, surprising and reassuring data about how one human body adapted to – and recovered from – the extreme environment of space.

The Twins Study provides the first integrated biomolecular view into how the human body responds to the spaceflight environment, and serves as a genomic stepping stone to better understand how to maintain crew health during human expeditions to the Moon and Mars.

Retired NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and his identical twin brother Mark, participated in the investigation, conducted by NASA’s Human Research Program...

An artist’s rendering of the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth. The purple, concentric shells represent the inner and outer belts. They completely encircle Earth, but have been cut away in this image to show detail.CREDIT: NASA’s Conceptual Image Lab/Walt Feimer

Predicting ‘killer’ electrons in the Earth’s outer radiation belt protects spacecraft. A new, first-of-its-kind space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth’s outer radiation belt...

Astronomers find first signs they can also form like a planet. Brown dwarfs fill the “gap” between stars and the much smaller planets – two very different types of astronomical objects. But how they originate has yet to be fully explained. Astronomers from Heidelberg University may now be able to answer that question...

Images reveal supermassive black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy. An international team of over 200 astronomers, including scientists from MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has captured the first direct images of a black hole...