Astronomy News

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NASA's Perseverance Rover Sends Sneak Peek of Mars Landing The Mars Perseverance lander has set down on the planet Mars to begin its search for ancient life. To see the news report of this rover landing, see the NASA/JPL News report of February 19, 2021.

Possible Super Earth in the Habitable Zone at Alpha Centauri Scientists believe they may have found what they call a 'Super-Earth' type planet orbiting one of our nearest neighboring stars - Alpha Centauri which is only about 4.3 light-years from Earth. For the complete story on this possible discovery, see the Universe Today news article of February 11, 2021.

Key Building Block for Organic Molecules Discovered in Meteorites A rather promising discovery - Japanese and NASA scientists have confirmed the presence of an important organic molecule in meteorites that could have been used to create other organic molecules, some of which could be used by life itself. To read more about this new discovery, see the Astrobiology Magazine article of January 12, 2021.

Building Blocks of Life Can Form Long Before Stars The latest news on life in space says that a team of international scientists have found that the simplest known amino acid glycine, which is an important building block of life, can form under the harsh conditions of space. To read more about this finding, see the Astrobiology Magazine article of November 27, 2020.

About Half of Sun-Like Stars Could Host Rocky, Potentially Habitable Planets Scientists using data from the retired Kepler space telescope mission have found that about half the stars similar in temperature to our Sun could have rocky planets capable of supporting liquid water necessary for life to exist. For complete report, see the NASA/Ames Research Center article of October 29, 2020.

NASA's SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon Many years ago, we heard that the moon had no atmosphere, no water, no nothing. Then we learned that it did have a little bit of an atmosphere. Now we learn that there is even a little bit of water present there as well. To learn more about this latest discovery, read the NASA Press Release of October 26, 2020.

NASA's Perseverance Rover Will Peer Beneath Mars' Surface In the search for past life on Mars, the Perseverance Rover which is due to land on Mars February 18, 2021, will be using a ground-penetrating radar called RIMFAX to search for signs of past microbial life. To learn more about this use of ground-penetrating radar on Mars, see the NASA/JPL News report of October 8, 2020.

Phosphine Gas in the Cloud Decks of Venus A gas known as phosphine has been detected in the atmosphere of Venus. This gas could come from several sources including the presence of life. To read more about the presence of phosphine gas in the atmosphere of the planet Venus, see the Nature Astronomy news report of September 14, 2020.

Hubble Maps Giant Halo Around Andromeda Galaxy Scientists using NASA'S Hubble Space Telescope have found a huge envelope of gas, called a halo surrounding Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. To read more on this, see NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center news release of August 27, 2020.

Hubble Uses Earth as a Proxy for Identifying Oxygen on Potentially Habitable Planets Around Other Stars Astronomrers using the Hubble Space Telescope for eclipse observations reproduces the conditions under which future telescopes would study and measure the atmosphere of transiting exoplanets which could contain the proper chemicals of interest to astrobiology or the study of life beyond Earth. For more information on this news story, see the NASA Exoplanet news article of August 6, 2020.

NASA, ULA Launch Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission to Red Planet The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission has been launched to begin a 7 month long trip to the red planet where it will search for signs of ancient life and collect samples to be sen t back to Earth. For more information on this mission, see the NASA/JPL News release of July 30, 2020.

A 2nd Planet Has Been Confirmed for Proxima Centauri Astronomers have just confirmed the existence of a second planet orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri which is the closest star system to our own at only 4.2 light-years away. To read more about this latest discovery, see the Universe Today.com news article of June 12, 2020.

Astronomers Discover New Class of Cosmic Explosions Cosmic explosions in space are nothing new but astronomers have identified two such cosmic explosions that are different than what was found in the past. They are said to be similar to some supernovae explosions and gamma-ray bursts but have some significant differences as well which sets them apart to some degree. For complete report on this story, see the Science Daily article opf May 26, 2020.

Long-Dead Stars Can Yield Clues to Life in the Cosmos In the coming years, new telescopes such as the Extremely Large Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to search for life on Earth-like exoplanets especially those that orbit burned out stars called white dwarfs. To learn more about this research, see the Astrobiology Magazine article of April 30, 2020.

Discovery Alert: The Rhythmic Dance of a 5-planet System Astronomers have discovered a 5 - planet sysyem orbiting a Sun-like star located 88 light-years away. The amazing thing about this system is that the planets are locked in a sort of rhythmic dance as they orbit their parent star. To read more about this discovery, see the NASA Exoplanet Exploration news report of April 28, 2020.

In a First, NASA Measures Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf Something new in astronomy - scientists have been able to measure the wind speed on a brown dwarf, an object that is not a planet but not massive enough to become a star. For complete report, see the NASA/JPL News release of April 9, 2020.

WFIRST Will Use Warped Space-time to Help Find Exoplanets NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope will be used to search for planets outside our solar system using its microlensing observations toward the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. To learn more about this mission to search for exoplanets, see the NASA/JPL News release of April 1, 2020.

Revisiting Decades - Old Voyager 2 Data Scientists Find One More Secret Decades ago the Voyager 2 space probe flew past the planet Uranus and when it did it passed through a giant magnetic bubble scientists have recently discovered after going over old data. The finding now raises questions about the planet's magnetic environment. For complete report, see the NASA News article of March 25, 2020.

A Year of Surprising Science From NASA's InSight Mars Mission Since the Mars InSight lander came down on Mars more than a year ago, a lot of information about Mars has been coming back from this mission such as about Martian quakes, dust devils and strange magnetic pulses. To learn more about what this mission is accomplishing, see the NASA/JPL News release of February 24, 2020.

Findings From NASA's Juno Update Jupiter Water Mystery NASA's Juno spacecraft has provided scientists with its first reading on the presence of water in Jupiter's atmosphere since the 1995 Galileo mission. For complete report on this update, see the NASA/JPL News report of February 18, 2020

New Horizons Team Uncovers a Critical Piece of the Planetary Formation Puzzle The New Horizons spacecraft which flew past Pluto a few years ago is still providing us with new information - the latest about how planets and planetesimals, planetary building blocks, were formed. To learn more about this, see the Science Daily news report of February 13, 2020.