The future looks bright--maybe too bright. The sun is slowly expanding and brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable. About 7.6 billion years from now, the sun will reach its maximum size as a red giant: its surface will extend beyond Earth’s orbit today by 20%
The turquoise waters of Miami, Florida, gleam underneath the International Space Station as it floats some 240 miles (390 kilometers) above the Earth's surface. The orbiting lab has hosted a rotating international crew since November 2000.
If you think that the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope is going to be boring, you haven't seen this yet.
Astronomical instruments needed to answer crucial questions, such as the search for Earth-like planets or the way the Universe expands, have come a step closer with the first demonstration at the telescope of a new calibration system for precise spectrographs. The method uses a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a 'laser frequency comb', and is
Sabine Kielbassa, Rosetta Flight Dynamics specialist sent this in earlier. She and her colleague, Michael Flegel, put together this animation for us last night (click on image at left for full animated GIF).
The first images from Rosetta’s OSIRIS imaging system and VIRTIS infrared spectrometer were derived from raw data this morning and have delivered spectacular results.
Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 4 September 2008--Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) has passed the bend in the crawlerway taking it to Launch Pad 39A, above left, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The crawlerway is flanked by the Banana River at right and Banana Creek at left. The Atlantic Ocean stretches across the horizon. Photographer: Kim Shiflett
Are you having trouble with funding? Is your research unable to attract major media attention? Just add Terror (TM)! That's what Dr Stoica of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory did, and it could work for you too. Dr Stoica's research is based on gait analysis - the idea that everyone has a distinctive walking pattern, and no matter how many fake
Next April, for a grand total of 8 minutes, NASA astronomers are going to glimpse a secret layer of the sun. Researchers call it "the transition region." It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases.
I’m a huge fan of Brian Cox. He’s often referred to as the “rockstar of physics,” which is a big complement considering the stereotypical physicist in everyone’s mind. From the get-go you know that Professor Cox is a guy you want in your laboratory, and you can see why from this excellent TED lecture he gave in Monterey, CA, this year.
In search of planets and the summer Milky Way, astronomer Tunç Tezel took an evening road trip. Last Saturday, after driving the winding road up Uludag, a mountain near Bursa, Turkey, he was rewarded by this beautiful skyview to the south.
For a while now scientists have thought a dense, massive object lurking at the center of our galaxy is likely a giant black hole, but they haven't been able to prove it. New observations offering the closest view yet of the heart of the Milky Way present strong evidence for the black hole theory, and even hope of finally settling the question soon.
An all-star gathering of legendary American astronauts appeared in Cleveland Aug. 29, 2008 to celebrate NASA's 50th anniversary. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, Jim Lovell, veteran of two Apollo missions, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space joined 15 other astro
Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe, and they don't appear in the Oprah studio audience. New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes - and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. T
Giant black holes sit at the cores of virtually all galaxies, and are thought to have grown from smaller seed black holes that swallowed lots of matter.
The Rosetta spacecraft control room is buzzing with anticipation as Rosetta closes in on asteroid 2867 Steins. The fly-by timeline includes a series of critical events, culminating with closest approach - expected at 20:58 CEST, 5 September 2008.