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Latest by G. Torbet

This artist’s conception shows the fully unfolded James Webb Space Telescope in space.

How engineers are getting James Webb’s NIRSpec instrument ready for science

Engineers are preparing the James Webb Space Telescope for operations this summer, including readying the telescope's four science instruments.
This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 – which comprises the two galaxies NGC 7469 and IC 5283 – lies roughly 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The larger of the two galaxies pictured here is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7469, and IC 5283 is its diminutive companion. NGC 7469 is also host to an active, supermassive black hole and a bright ring of star clusters.

Hubble returns to a pair of interacting galaxies for a second look

The image from the Hubble Space Telescope this week shows a pair of interacting galaxies, which are close enough that they are affecting each other.
starlink string of satellites captured in cool video a day after launch

Musk says Starlink satellite internet now enabled in Ukraine

SpaceX has enabled its Starlink satellite-based internet service in Ukraine, according to CEO Elon Musk.
In this illustration, light from a smaller black hole (left) curves around a larger black hole and forms an almost-mirror image on the other side. The gravity of a black hole can warp the fabric of space itself, such that light passing close to the black hole will follow a curved path around it.

Astronomers spot two black holes colliding in epic merger

Astronomers have spotted a pair of black holes which are heading for an epic collision.
Soyuz MS-16 lifts off

Russia suspends Soyuz launches from Europe spaceport over EU sanctions

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is halting launches of its Soyuz rockets from French Guiana in response to EU sanctions due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
James Webb Space Telescope illustration.

Engineers for James Webb have stacked its 18 images into one

The long process of aligning the telescope's mirrors continues, but engineers reached an important milestone when they completed the image stacking step.
Inouye Solar Telescope with closed aperture near Haleakalā summit, Maui, HI.

World’s most powerful solar telescope begins science operations

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawai'i recently began its first science observations in the start of its year-long commissioning phase.
Artist's impression of Kepler-16b, the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars - what's called a circumbinary planet. The planet, which can be seen in the foreground, was discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.

This exoplanet has two suns – just like Tatooine

A team of astronomers has detected a Tatooine-like exoplanet which orbits two stars. A person living on the planet would see two suns in the sky.
Graphic depiction of BREEZE- Bioinspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Exploration.

NASA considers bird-like drones to explore Venus’s atmosphere

NASA has announced some of the out-there futuristic mission concepts it plans to study, including a stunning plan to explore Venus using stingray-like drones.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

NASA’s Roman telescope could spot Earth-like planets

James Webb might be grabbing all the headlines right now, but NASA has big plans for another space-based telescope too: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Artist's impression of the exoplanet WASP-121 b. It belongs to the class of hot Jupiters. Due to its proximity to the central star, the planet's rotation is tidally locked to its orbit around it. As a result, one of WASP-121 b's hemispheres always faces the star, heating it to temperatures of up to 3000 degrees Celsius.The night side is always oriented towards cold space, which is why it is 1500 degrees Celsius cooler there.

Wild exoplanet has metal clouds and rain of liquid gems

One of the strangest we know of has to be WASP-121 b. Research reveals what the weather might be like there, and it's just as weird as you might think.
An artist's rendering of the Swift spacecraft with a gamma-ray burst going off in the background.

NASA’s Swift Observatory is back to observing gamma-ray bursts

NASA's Swift Observatory, which investigates gamma-ray bursts, has returned to operations following an issue which forced it into safe mode last month.
The mass of dust and bright swirls of stars in this image are the distant galaxy merger IC 2431, which lies 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured what appears to be a triple galaxy merger in progress, as well as a tumultuous mixture of star formation and tidal distortions caused by the gravitational interactions of this galactic trio. A thick cloud of dust obscures the center of this image – though light from a background galaxy is piercing its outer extremities.

Hubble captures epic view of three galaxies merging into one

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows no less than three galaxies that are in the process of merging to become one, called IC 2431.
An artist’s rendition of a binary system of brown dwarfs like CWISE J014611.20-050850.0AB.

Pair of brown dwarfs orbit each other 12 billion miles apart

Astronomers have spotted a pair of brown dwarfs, which are objects in between planets and stars, which have the widest separation found to date.
The Full Sun Imager of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured a giant solar eruption on 15 February 2022.

Solar Orbiter captures a dramatic solar prominence

Solar Orbiter, a mission to study the sun from NASA and ESA, recently took an image of the sun showing a dramatic solar prominence as it happened.
This early Webb alignment image, with dots of starlight arranged in a pattern similar to the honeycomb shape of the primary mirror, is called an “image array.”

James Webb’s hexagonal image array shows its mirror’s shape

The latest update from the James Webb Space Telescope is a new image of the star HD 84406 shown 18 times in a hexagonal image array.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 66 Flight Engineer Thomas Marshburn configures the Combustion Integrated Rack to begin SoFIE operations.

Setting things on fire on the ISS to study flames in space

A new series of experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) aim to study fire in space to better understand how to protect future space explorers.
Perseverance snapped this view of a hill called “Santa Cruz” on April 29, 2021. About 20 inches (50 centimeters) across on average, the boulders in the foreground are among the type of rocks the rover team has named “Ch’ał” (the Navajo term for “frog” and pronounced “chesh”). Perseverance will return to the area next week or so.

All the things the Perseverance rover has achieved in its first year on Mars

It's been one year since NASA's Perseverance rover made its remarkable landing on Mars. Twelve months on, NASA has shared a roundup of the rover's achievements.
Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket on Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

How to watch NASA launch a cargo ship to the ISS today

Today, Saturday February 19, NASA and Northrop Grumman will launch a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Here's how to watch.
mars dust devils tgo detail

Otherworldly Mars image shows ripples sculpted by dust devils

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a hauntingly beautiful image of the surface of Mars, showing how the landscape there is sculpted by winds.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope feels incredibly three-dimensional for a piece of deep-space imagery. The image shows Arp 282, an interacting galaxy pair composed of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 169 (bottom) and the galaxy IC 1559 (top).

Hubble spots a rare pair of highly active galaxies

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a pair of interacting galaxies, collectively known as Arp 282.
Russia's ISS Progress 75 cargo craft, seen departing from the International Space Station April 27, 2021 after undocking from the Zvezda service module's aft port, where it stayed for just over a year. The trash-filled spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere above the South Pacific for a fiery but safe demise a day later.

How to watch a Russian cargo ship deliver supplies to the ISS tomorrow

NASA will livestream the launch and docking of Russian resupply craft to the ISS this week, and we've got the details on how to watch the stream from home.
exoplanet habitable zone dead star white dwarf planetary debris

Hints of a planet in the habitable zone of a dead star

Researchers find indications of a potential exoplanet in a white dwarf's narrow habitable zone for the first time.
A mid-level solar flare that peaked at 8:13 p.m. EDT on Oct. 1, 2015, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

NASA announces two new missions to study the sun

To learn more about the sun and how it affects the space environment, NASA has recently announced two new space missions.
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Supercomputer simulates the entire universe, from Big Bang to now

Researchers have produced the most accurate simulation of the universe to date, modelling its entire history from the Big Bang to the present day.
Jupiter’s southern hemisphere is shown in this image from NASA’s Juno mission. New observations by NASA’s NuSTAR reveal that auroras near both the planet’s poles emit high-energy X-rays, which are produced when accelerated particles collide with Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Jupiter’s magnetosphere ‘acts like a giant particle accelerator’

A thirty-year old mystery about X-ray emissions from Jupiter has been solved.
This “selfie” was created using a specialized pupil imaging lens inside of the NIRCam instrument that was designed to take images of the primary mirror segments instead of images of space. This configuration is not used during scientific operations and is used strictly for engineering and alignment purposes. In this case, the bright segment was pointed at a bright star, while the others aren’t currently in the same alignment. This image gave an early indication of the primary mirror alignment to the instrument.

See the very first image (and first selfie!) from James Webb

NASA has released both the first image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and even a selfie snapped by one of the telescope's cameras.
This artist’s impression shows a close-up view of Proxima d, a planet candidate recently found orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System.

Astronomers spot a new planet orbiting our neighboring star

Astronomers have found a new planet orbiting our neighboring star Proxima Centauri, and it's one of the lightest exoplanets ever found.
The dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 featured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope lies in the southern constellation Pictor, approximately 17 million light-years from Earth. NGC 1705 is a cosmic oddball – it is small, irregularly shaped, and has recently undergone a spate of star formation known as a starburst.

Hubble revisits an irregular dwarf galaxy bursting with young stars

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the quirky dwarf galaxy NGC 1705, an unusually shaped small galaxy located 17 million light-years away.
An artist's rendering of the Swift spacecraft with a gamma-ray burst going off in the background.

How NASA is fixing the gamma-ray burst Swift Observatory

NASA has a plan to fix the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which suffered a mechanical issue in January and has been in safe mode since then.
Starlink Satellites pass overhead near Carson National Forest, New Mexico, photographed soon after launch.

Astronomers are worried about satellite constellations like Starlink

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is setting up a new center to tackle the problem of interference from satellite constellations.
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Rocket startup Astra scrubs its first launch for NASA

Rocket startup Astra had to scrub its first launch for NASA, scheduled for yesterday, Saturday February 5, due to a range asset issue.
Crew Dragon Endeavour shortly before splashdown.

NASA and SpaceX reviewing parachute issue on Dragon spacecraft

NASA and SpaceX are investigating an issue with the parachute opening during recent Dragon splashdowns, though the problem doesn't seem to be a dangerous one.
Using the 4.1-meter SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) Telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, astronomers have confirmed that an asteroid discovered in 2020 by the Pan-STARRS1 survey, called 2020 XL5, is an Earth Trojan (an Earth companion following the same path around the Sun as Earth does) and revealed that it is much larger than the only other Earth Trojan known.

Second asteroid ever to share Earth’s orbit is a big one

Very few asteroids share the orbit of Earth -- just two have been discovered to date -- and astronomers have recently confirmed the existence and size of one.