Space, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 31, 2023

Rare red asteroids around Neptune could reveal the secrets of the early solar system

Neptune is famously a vivid blue, but the asteroids orbiting near it are decidedly not. An international team of astronomers recently took a peek at Neptune's Trojan asteroids and found that they all seem to be some shade of red — far redder than most asteroids in the solar system....

Mar 31, 2023

'Hidden' rings of Uranus revealed in dazzling new James Webb telescope images

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have zoomed in on the faint and dusty rings around Uranus — and they are magnificent. Located near the frigid edge of the solar system an average of 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from the sun, Uranus is not often thought...

Mar 31, 2023

How to watch Europe launch its alien-hunting JUICE satellite live on Thursday

On Thursday (April 13), the European Space Agency (ESA) is launching an exciting new mission to study whether the moons of Jupiter have the potential to host alien life: the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, also known as JUICE. And you can watch the launch happen, thanks to ESA's live coverage,...

Mar 31, 2023

Disastrous SpaceX launch under federal investigation after raining potentially hazardous debris on homes and beaches

SpaceX's Starship has been grounded by the U.S. government following claims that the rocket's explosive first launch spread plumes of potentially hazardous debris over homes and the habitats of endangered animals. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — the U.S. civil aviation regulator — has stopped SpaceX from conducting any further...

Feb 28, 2023

Elementary schoolers prove EpiPens become toxic in space — something NASA never knew

Elementary school students in Canada recently schooled NASA scientists when they discovered that life-saving EpiPens can turn poisonous when launched into space. Students from St. Brother André School's Program for Gifted Learners (PGL) in Ottawa were studying the effects of cosmic radiation on epinephrine, the active ingredient found in EpiPens,...

Feb 28, 2023

Space junk: Why is debris from rockets and satellites orbiting Earth a problem?

There's a floating garbage dump orbiting Earth, and it's getting fuller every year. Space debris — known colloquially as space junk — is the name that scientists give to the thousands of pieces of broken satellites and spacecraft that clog Earth's orbit. Space junk can be as small as a...

Feb 28, 2023

1st evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus detected in groundbreaking study

Planetary scientists have found groundbreaking evidence of recent volcanic activity on Venus. Archives from NASA's Magellan mission show telltale signs that Maat Mons, a 5-mile-high (8 kilometers) volcano on Earth's hellish twin, was active in 1991. Magellan, launched in May 1989, was the first spacecraft to map the entire surface...

Feb 28, 2023

The universe might be shaped like a doughnut, not like a pancake, new research suggests

The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it's as flat as a pancake, new research suggests. Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested...

Jan 31, 2023

'1-in-10-billion' star system is doomed to explode in a fiery kilonova

For the first time, scientists have discovered a double-star system that is doomed to explode in a fiery kilonova, a precious-metal-creating blast caused by the merger of two stellar corpses. The kilonova — which will send gold, silver, platinum and other new heavy elements careening into space — won't happen...

Jan 31, 2023

Enormous 'polar vortex' on the sun is unprecedented, scientists say

On Feb. 2, a massive tentacle of plasma snapped apart in the sun's atmosphere before tumbling down, circling the star's north pole at thousands of miles a minute, and then disappearing — leaving scientists baffled. The entire spectacle, which lasted about 8 hours, went viral on Twitter when Tamitha Skov,...

Dec 31, 2022

Mysterious 'sparks' on the sun could help scientists predict solar flares

Solar flares, powerful bursts of radiation from the sun, are often preceded by a pre-flare spark, scientists have discovered. The finding could lead to better predictions of solar storms, which can disrupt power grids and communications systems on Earth. The scientists made the discovery after digging into years of data...

Dec 31, 2022

The James Webb Telescope detected the coldest ice in the known universe – and it contains the building blocks of life

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have observed and measured the coldest ice in the deepest reaches of an interstellar molecular cloud to date. The frozen molecules measured minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 263 degrees Celsius), according to new research published Jan. 23 in the journal Nature Astronomy....

Dec 31, 2022

Gigantic 'alien' comet spotted heading straight for the sun

Scientists have spotted an enormous, 'alien' comet streaking straight towards the sun. The 3.7 mile-wide (6 kilometers) space iceball, called 96P/Machholz 1, is thought to have come from somewhere outside our solar system, and is being monitored by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft as...

Dec 31, 2023

Einstein Probe, with unique 'lobster eye,' deploys to unravel the mysteries of black holes, colliding neutron stars and supernovas

China just launched its Einstein Probe, a unique telescope with a special lobster eye camera designed to study the X-rays produced by colliding black holes, stellar corpses and supernovas. The spacecraft, which blasted off atop a Long March 2C rocket Tuesday (Jan. 9) at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 GMT, 3:03...

Dec 31, 2023

'A big cosmological mystery': Newfound cosmic corkscrew defies our understanding of the universe

Astronomers have discovered a cosmic ring that's so enormous, it defies explanation with our best theories of the universe. Named the Big Ring, the gigantic spiral of galaxies and galaxy clusters is 1.3 billion light-years wide and has a circumference of 4 billion light-years, making it one of the largest...