A Road Trip with Commander Chris

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Beautiful New Hubble Photo Shows Hot, Young Variable Stars in the Orion Nebula January 28, 2023
Here’s another striking image from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. These billows of blue and red show a detailed look at a small portion of the famous Orion Nebula. But what really catches the eye are the brilliant stars with the cross-shaped diffraction spikes — a hallmark of Hubble images. In the center is the […]
Nancy Atkinson
It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes January 27, 2023
Detecting exoplanets was frontier science not long ago. But now we’ve found over 5,000 of them, and we expect to find them around almost every star. The next step is to characterize these planets more fully in hopes of finding ones that might support life. Directly imaging them will be part of that effort. But […]
Evan Gough
NASA and DARPA Will be Testing a Nuclear Rocket in Space January 27, 2023
NASA and DARPA have teamed up to create a nuclear thermal rocket that could perform an orbital flight test by 2027. The post NASA and DARPA Will be Testing a Nuclear Rocket in Space appeared first on Universe Today.
Matt Williams
Europe Will be Building the Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return Mission January 27, 2023
Now that the Perseverance rover has dropped off ten regolith and rock sample tubes for a future sample return mission to retrieve, the plans for such a mission are coming together. The mission is a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, and ESA has agreed to build a 2.5-meter-long robotic arm to […]
Nancy Atkinson
Truck-Sized Asteroid Flew Past Earth Yesterday, Coming Within 3,600 km January 27, 2023
On January 26, a truck-sized asteroid flew past Earth, coming extremely close – within 3,600 km (2,200 miles) above the planet’s surface. This is well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites and NASA says this flyby is one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded. The asteroid, named 2023 BU’s has an […]
Nancy Atkinson