Baltimore, Maryland—(ENEWSPF)—February 20, 2018 By: Christine Pulliam The planet Mars has fascinated scientists for over a century. Today, it is a frigid desert world with a carbon dioxide atmosphere 100 times thinner than Earth’s. But evidence suggests that in the early history of our solar system, Mars had an ocean’s[Read More…]
Space
NASA Seeks the Gold in Winter Olympics Snow (Video)
Greenbelt, Maryland—(ENEWSPF)—February 9, 2018 By: Kasha Patel NASA engineer Manuel Vega can see one of the Olympic ski jump towers from the rooftop of the South Korean weather office where he is stationed. Vega is not watching skiers take flight, preparing for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and Paralympic games. Instead,[Read More…]
New NASA Space Sensors to Address Key Earth Science Questions
Washington—(ENEWSPF)—February 6, 2018 By: Steve Cole Why is the Arctic warming faster than the rest of the planet? Does mineral dust warm or cool the atmosphere? NASA has selected two new, creative research proposals to develop small, space-based instruments that will tackle these fundamental questions about our home planet and[Read More…]
New Clues to TRAPPIST-1 Planet Compositions, Atmospheres (Video)
CALIFORNIA—(ENEWSPF)—February 5, 2018 By: Elizabeth Landau In the year since NASA announced the seven Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, scientists have been working hard to better understand these enticing worlds just 40 light-years away. Thanks to data from a combination of space- and ground-based telescopes, we know more about[Read More…]
NASA’s Newly Rediscovered IMAGE Mission Provided Key Aurora Research
Greenbelt, Maryland—(ENEWSPF)—February 2, 2018 By: Miles Hatfield On Jan. 20, 2018, amateur astronomer Scott Tilley detected an unexpected signal coming from what he later postulated was NASA’s long-lost IMAGE satellite, which had not been in contact since 2005. On Jan. 30, NASA — along with help from a community of[Read More…]
Mount Sharp ‘Photobombs’ Mars Curiosity Rover (Video)
CALIFORNIA—(ENEWSPF)—February 1, 2018 By: Andrew Good A new self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle on Vera Rubin Ridge, which it has been investigating for the past several months. Directly behind the rover is the start of a clay-rich slope scientists are eager to begin exploring. In coming[Read More…]
‘Super Blue Blood Moon’ Coming January 31 (Video)
Washington, DC—(ENEWSPF)—January 30, 2018 By: Tricia Talbert If you live in the western part of North America, Alaska, and the Hawaiian islands, you might set your alarm early the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 31 for a lunar trifecta: a pre-dawn “super blue blood moon.” Beginning at 5:30 a.m. EST on[Read More…]
Johns Hopkins Scientist Proposes New Definition of a Planet
MARYLAND—(ENEWSPF)—January 26, 2018 By: Phil Sneiderman Pluto hogs the spotlight in the continuing scientific debate over what is and what is not a planet, but a less conspicuous argument rages on about the planetary status of massive objects outside our solar system. The dispute is not just about semantics, as[Read More…]
Hubble Finds Substellar Objects in the Orion Nebula
Baltimore, MD-(ENEWSPF)- In an unprecedented deep survey for small, faint objects in the Orion Nebula, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the largest known population of brown dwarfs sprinkled among newborn stars. Looking in the vicinity of the survey stars, researchers not only found several very-low-mass brown dwarf[Read More…]
What Scientists Can Learn About the Moon During the Jan. 31 Eclipse
Greenbelt, Maryland—(ENEWSPF)—January 23, 2018 By Elizabeth Zubritsky The lunar eclipse on Jan. 31 will give a team of scientists a special opportunity to study the Moon using the astronomer’s equivalent of a heat-sensing, or thermal, camera. Three lunar events will come together in an unusual overlap that’s being playfully called[Read More…]