Space & Spaceflight

NASA’s New Orbiter Will Watch Plants Photosynthesize from Space

For the last 25 years, scientists have been able to monitor the “greenness” of trees from space and use that as a tool for evaluating plant health. The problem is that greenness isn’t a good indicator for stresses—such as drought—because some trees (think pines) continue to be a lovely green until they’re dead. Researchers are…

This Is the Milky Way’s Magnetic Fingerprint

The swirls, loops and arches in this image may look like a new artwork—but they are in fact the results of the first ever all-sky observations of polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way, and they represent the galaxy’s magnetic fingerprint. Compiled from data acquired by the ESA’s Planck satellite, the image…

The Moon Is Way Bigger Than You Probably Think

The Moon looks pretty cute and small in the night sky, and even kind of cozy and twee in the Apollo landing images. But in reality, it’s way bigger than you probably think. Placed on Earth, its diameter would be able to hide Europe, and its surface area is larger than that of Europe, China,…

Saturn’s Rings as a Cosmic Rainbow

You’ve never seen Saturn’s rings like this before. Captured using Cassini’s Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph detector, it shows the rings in the ultraviolet spectrum—and the result is incredibly colorful. The image shows the portion of the C-ring closest to Saturn on the left, with the B-ring beginning just right of center. Incidentally, the rings were named…

These Beautiful Martian Dunes Are Constantly Changing

The dunes of Mars are in a complete state of flux, and none more so that Nili Patera. The most active dune field on Mars is always changing—and so it’s constantly photographed by NASA’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. That instrument is aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and it allows an image to the captured…

May The Fourth Be With You, Real-Science Edition

Today is the day for Star Wars puns, and paying tribute to the space-fantasy epic. The movie pops up as a regular inspiration and analogy in real-life science. From robots on the International Space Station, to real-life exoplanets, Star Wars is everywhere. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…. In astronomy, every…

Watch the ISS’s View of Earth Live, Right Here, Right Now

NASA just switched on the High Definition Earth Viewing experiment, a live stream view of earth beamed directly from the International Space Station. See the view, hear the crew’s radio communications—it’s almost like being on board! The experiment, which starts today and runs through October of 2015, will help determine how earth-facing cameras survive in…

Stellar Collapse Models: 500TB of Data, 200 Milliseconds of Insight

Though we’ll never see close-up what happens at the core of a massive star collapse, scientists are doing their best to understand what happens when they do—and the results of the theoretical 3D models they create are absolutely stunning. It’s easy to understand what happens at the surface of a collapsing star—because we can see…

The Antarctic Neutrino Camera Is About to Get Much, Much Bigger

The University of Wisconsin’s IceCube neutrino detection system has been quietly operating amid Antarctica’s barren tundra for more than four years now. In that time, the fledgling detector has captured more than 100 cosmic neutrinos, many of which originated far outside our Milky Way galaxy. And if project leaders get their way, its imaging quality…

What It Will Take to Farm Sunlight from Space

Whether they’re producing voltage directly from solar rays or focusing them to melt salt like Ivanpah, even Earth’s biggest and baddest solar power plants are hamstrung by all this damnable atmosphere getting in the way. But a new kind of off-world solar energy plant could soon provide the whole planet with plenty of power—we just…

Car-Sized Hunk From Satellite Launch Found in the Amazon

A Brazilian fisherman floating down the Uriandeua river in northern Brazil bumped into perhaps the last thing you’d expect to find in the Amazon: a huge chunk of metal that the UK Space Agency says came from the launch of Europe’s largest telecom satellite last year. How in the hell did it get there? As…

A scientists puts the finishing touches to a space launcher thrust chamber at EADS Airbus Space Transportation in Ottobrunn, Germany. If it looks a lot like science fiction, that’s because… well, it is. [ESA]

This Graceful Orion Test Flight Is Really Simulating a Launch Disaster

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is this generation’s moonshot: mankind’s first-ever manned spacecraft built to go beyond the moon into deep space. It’s equipped with a Launch Abort System that safely lands the craft if a problem occurs during liftoff. This week, NASA drop-tested the system. Falling from 13,000 feet never looked so graceful. Dropped from a…

These Are the Most Complete Pictures Yet of the Sun’s Atmosphere

You’re looking at the most complete photograph yet taken of the sun’s atmosphere—and it reveals complex patterns of expanding bubbles and mushrooms of matter, which are thought to cause the solar winds that the star spits out toward the rest of the Solar System. The image was captured using a high-resolution eclipse-imaging technique by a…

Build Your Favorite Space Gadgets With LittleBits’ Awesome NASA Kit

The Mars Rover. The ISS grappling arm. An infrared light meter. You can build working models of all of those and more with LittleBits‘ new space-themed electronics kit, which is NASA scientist-approved and here to let kids experience simpler versions of the challenges that space scientists and engineers face every day. By following the kit’s…

Watch Where 26 Asteroids Recently Slammed Into Earth

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Detection Network, that’s usually used to monitor for covert nuclear weapons testing, serves and alternative use in its spare time: it detects asteroid impacts. This video visualizes the data it’s managed to collect since 2000. In total, it’s helped detect 26 asteroids entering Earth’s atmosphere between then and now which…

Using Plastic Surgery To Keep Astronauts Human On Long Space Missions

A brief exchange in the back of last week’s issue of New Scientist asks: “I understand that the lines and sagging skin we acquire as we age are due to the sun and gravity. If I lived in a space station in zero or microgravity away from the sun, would I stay looking young?” A…

The SpaceX Launch Is Sending Dinosaur Microbes to the Space Station

The SpaceX Dragon capsule that just left Earth for the International Space Station is carrying many an important item: a new laser communication system, coffee (which they just ran out of!), a planter for fresh produce, and billions and billions of microbes swabbed from dinosaur bones, sneakers, and spacecraft clean rooms. Over the next few…

HD Video From Space Makes the World’s Tallest Building Look Like a Toy

Static, low-res satellite imagery is so passé. Watching HD video from space satellites is the future, especially when looking down on the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. We’ve seen how footage like this makes the world look like a video game, or a Micro Machines playset! It’s sped up of course, but the airplane…

What Would Happen If the Earth Span So Fast a Day Lasted One Second?

The Earth takes a little under 24 hours to rotates on its axis. But what if that leisurely paced pick up—and up and up and up? In this week’s What If, Randall Munroe decided to answer that exact question. If the Earth rotated so fast that a day lasted a single second, things would go…