By Glynn Wilson – After a decade-long journey through the solar system, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto on Tuesday, making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth. The craft passed 7,750 miles above the surface of the dwarf planet, roughly the distance from New…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will celebrate the 45th annual Earth Day April 17-22 with a variety of live and online activities to engage the public in the agency’s mission to better understand and protect the planet. The agency uses the vantage point of space to increase understanding of the planet,…
Millions of images of celestial objects, including asteroids, are now available to the public online from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft. “NEOWISE is a vital asset in NASA’s program to find objects that truly represent an impact hazard to Earth,” Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA…
By Glynn Wilson – The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest on record since 1880, according to two separate analyses by scientists from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000, they say in a release just out…
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have gone looking for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun — and have come up nearly dry. The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, are between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth and were thought to…
They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe’s stars. Studying this early epoch of the universe’s history is critical to fully understanding how these stars formed and…
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe – among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 24-year-old telescope. Researchers say the image, in new study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, provides the missing link in star formation. The Hubble…
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest “brown dwarf” known — a dim, star-like body that, surprisingly, is as frosty as Earth’s North Pole. Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object’s distance to 7.2 light-years away, earning it the title for fourth closest…
By Glynn Wilson – Astronomers have accomplished the first direct measurement of the spin of a distant black hole, an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time, scientists say. The research suggests that this black hole grew by gradually merging material rather than pulling in material in from different directions. NASA’s Chandra…
