How can scientists estimate the pH level of Enceladus' subsurface ocean without landing on its surface? This is what a study recently posted to the arXiv preprint server hopes to address as a team of scientists from Japan investigated new methods for sampling the plumes of Enceladus and have provided more accurate measurements of its pH levels. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the subsurface ocean conditions on Enceladus and whether it's suitable for life as we know it.
Astronomers from the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) in Cairo, Egypt, have investigated a young open cluster known as Czernik 38. As a result, they found a new open cluster, which turns out to be a companion to Czernik 38. The discovery was detailed in a paper published Jan. 14 on the arXiv pre-print server.
To land on the right foot on the Red Planet, European engineers have been dropping a skeleton of the four-legged ExoMars descent module at various speeds and heights on simulated Martian surfaces.
Baby pictures are some of a family's most cherished artifacts. The same thing can be said of the Hubble Space Telescope and the infant stars it immortalizes in its scientific portraits. But while we know how babies are conceived and how they form in great detail, the same can't be said for star formation.
It's one of astronomy's great mysteries: how did black holes get so big, so massive, so quickly. An answer to this cosmic conundrum has now been provided by researchers at Ireland's Maynooth University (MU) and reported today in Nature Astronomy.
We now have direct images of two supermassive black holes: M87* and Sag A*. The fact that we can capture such images is remarkable, but they might be the only black holes we can observe. That is, unless we take radio astronomy to a whole new level.
Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these "dirty snowballs" spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible.
Alicja Ostrowska's doctoral thesis "Life and AI at NASA" examines how artificial intelligence is transforming the way science is conducted within some of the world's most ambitious space projects. The study investigates how AI is used in NASA's missions exploring the conditions for present or past life on other planets and moons and what this means for how knowledge is produced. The research is based on fieldwork with scientists and engineers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Sweeping winds of vaporized metals have been found in a massive cloud that dimmed the light of a star for nearly nine months. This discovery, made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, offers a rare glimpse into the chaotic and dynamic processes still shaping planetary systems long after their formation.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, promises many benefits in all domains, and rocketry is no different. The European Space Agency's Future Launchers Preparatory Program (FLPP) is investigating the use of AI to develop better processes and even whole new shapes in materials that could be used on rockets or spacecraft of the future.
NASA announced Tuesday the selection of three new science investigations that will strengthen humanity's understanding and exploration of the moon. As part of the agency's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, American companies will deliver these research payloads to the lunar surface no earlier than 2028.
The astronauts evacuated last week from the International Space Station say a portable ultrasound machine came in "super handy" during the medical crisis.
Microorganisms live in biofilms—the equivalent of microbial "cities"—everywhere on Earth. These city-like structures protect and house microbial communities and play essential roles in enabling human and plant health on our planet. Now, a new Perspective article published in npj Biofilms and Microbiomes sets out a path to uncover the role of biofilms in health during long-duration spaceflight, and how spaceflight research can reshape our understanding of these microbial communities on Earth.
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a new extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-3862 b, turns out to be a dense super-Neptune exoplanet. The finding is reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv preprint server.
Astronomers have long searched for life within a rather narrow ring around a star, the "habitable zone," where a planet should be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water. A new study argues that this ring is too strict: on tidally locked worlds that keep one face in daylight and the other in permanent night, heat may still circulate enough for liquid water to persist on the dark side, even when the planet orbits closer to cool M- and K-dwarf stars than conservative climate models allow.
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