Category Astronomy/Space

Illustration of MAVEN spacecraft at Mars. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Mars has metal ions high in its atmosphere, according to new results from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The metal ions can reveal previously invisible activity in the mysterious electrically charged upper atmosphere (ionosphere) of Mars. “MAVEN has made the first direct detection of the permanent presence of metal ions in the ionosphere of a planet other than Earth,” said Joseph Grebowsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Because metallic ions have long lifetimes and are transported far from their region of origin by neutral winds and electric fields, they can be used to infer motion in the ionosphere, similar to the way we use a lofted leaf to reveal which way the wind is blowing.”

Pre-supernova stars may show signs of instability for months before the big explosion. Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science

Pre-supernova stars may show signs of instability for months before the big explosion, spewing material into space and creating a dense gas shell around themselves, report scientists in a new report. In the most common type of supernova, the iron core of a massive star suddenly collapses in on itself and the outer layers are thrown out into space in a spectacular explosion. New research led by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers shows that the stars that become core-collapse supernovae might already exhibit instability for several months before the big event, spewing material into space and creating a dense gas shell around themselves...

How researchers replicate space radiation in the lab: a light source stimulates hydrogen and thus creates energy-rich ultraviolet radiation. Credit: © RUB, Damian Gorczany

What chemical processes in space could have created the building blocks of life is being researched by chemists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Prof Dr Wolfram Sander’s team. In their experiments, they are simulating the conditions in space to understand in detail how certain chemical reactions occur. One theory says that the building blocks of life were not created on Earth. Cometary impacts may have brought amino acids to our planet. How such complex molecules could have formed in space is a question being investigated by Sander’s team. The scientists are interested in processes in a condensed phase, i.e...

This computer-generated image depicts the flyby of asteroid 2014 JO25. The asteroid will safely fly past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance between Earth and the moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A relatively large near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly 3 years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at ~1.1 million miles or ~4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Although there is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid of this size...