A light echo is light from a stellar explosion echoing off dust surrounding the star that produces enough energy in a brief flash to illuminate surrounding dust. The star presumably ejected the illuminated dust shells in previous outbursts. Light from the latest outburst travels to the dust and then is reflected to Earth.
Usually Phoenix generates a small amount of data daily about maintaining its computer files, and this data gets a high priority in what gets stored in the spacecraft’s non-volatile flash memory. On Tuesday, the quantity of this data was so high that it prevented science data from being stored in flash memory, so the remaining science data onboard
For more than 30 years, researchers have been cooking up mock Martian soil but no single material can simulate all its properties
US lawmakers hope to force the space agency to schedule an extra flight so that an expensive particle detector can be hauled into space
Of all the tons of fuel that drives modern space flight, cash is the most critical. That was the stark reality brought front and center on Wednesday at the first-ever Space Business Forum in New York, where leading rocket scientists, military officers and even hedge-fund managers crunched the numbers to illuminate the future of the space industry.
Grand tidal streams of stars seem to surround galaxy NGC 5907. The arcing structures form tenuous loops extending more than 150,000 light-years from the narrow, edge-on spiral, also known as the Splinter or Knife Edge Galaxy.
“It must be ice,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”
The Phoenix lander appears to have fallen down a rabbit hole on Mars. How else to explain why it is exploring, from its stationary spot in the frigid northern plains, nearby sites called Wonderland, Cheshire Cat and Croquet Ground?”The overarching…
