Stephen Hawking Backs $100m Search for Aliens
The Breakthrough Listen project is our latest attempt to see if any other civilisations have made it through the Great Filter without destroying themselves in radioactive fires, investing $100m in the neverending hunt for aliens clever enough to have invented telly and satellites. The mission will use two of the largest radio telescopes on earth…
What’s the Point of a Fly-By When We Have the Tech to Go Into Orbit?
New Horizons’ fly-by of Pluto and its moons is the latest in a historic string of missions to objects in the solar system. But given that a fly-by lasts for just a short time, how much can we really get out of it? There’s no doubt that the mission will yield a great deal of…
Earth, Meet Hydra
Hydra is the outermost of Pluto’s known moons, and until now, we’d only ever seen it as a faint pixel of light. Today, planet Earth gets its first real glimpse of this tiny, enigmatic satellite. This never-before-seen view of Hydra’s surface was captured yesterday at a distance of 645,000 km, within hours of New Horizons…
Charon, You are a Glorious, Beautiful, Complicated Moon
This is Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, in the most beautiful, detailed, highest-resolution single frame image we’ll be downlinking from the flyby this month. And it is amazing. This image was taken just 466,000 kilometers (289,000 miles) from Charon within hours of New Horizon’s closest approach early on July 14, 2015. The image was taken with…
Everything We’re Learning About Pluto and Its Moons RIGHT NOW
It’s been a crazy week learning about Pluto as the New Horizons spacecraft makes the first-ever close encounter with the dwarf planet. Join us as we live-blog the very first science results as the mission team reports back after closest approach. On Monday, we confirmed that Pluto really is the biggest dwarf planet and the…