Planet-eating Stars More Common Than Previously Thought, Astrophysicists Find | Australia News | The ...

Planet-eating stars are more abundant in the universe than previously thought, an Australian-led study has found.

The study, by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in Three Dimensions (Astro 3D), looked at "co-natal" or twin stars, born from the same molecular cloud, where one had "eaten" a planet and the other had not.

The researchers found one in 12 pairs of stars have absorbed entire planets or planetary material, changing their chemical make up.

Astronomers assumed such an event was possible, but the first planet-eating star was only caught in the act last year, and the latest study shows the cosmic consumption is more common than previously thought and can happen with younger stars.

Read more: See here

Soyuz MS-25 Has Finally Launched To The International Space Station With Crew From Russia, Belarus, And NASA - ...

The fourth human spaceflight — and third orbital human flight — of the year has successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS). Soyuz MS-25 was scheduled to fly on Thursday, March 21, at 13:21 UTC from Site 31/6 at the spaceport. Mission commander Oleg Novitsky, representing Roscosmos, NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya were on board. An automatic abort command was issued at the T-20 second mark, however. With a 10 minute window for this launch, the next opportunity was on Saturday, March 23 at 12:36 UTC.

More details: Visit origin

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin Pass Key Pee Milestone For NASA Contract

Source: Visit website

NASA Is Recruiting A New Class Of Astronauts

"Typically, it's a very popular application," April Jordan, NASA's astronaut selection manager, said.

The odds that you will be chosen are slim. The last time NASA put out a call for applications, in 2020, more than 12,000 people applied.

It took the agency a year and a half to go through the applications. NASA selected just 10 of the hopefuls, or 0.083 percent. That makes Harvard's 3.5 percent acceptance rate among high school applicants appear bountiful.

Ms. Jordan is on a media tour to spread the word that " the right stuff " for being an astronaut in 2024 is not the same as what it was in the 1960s, when astronauts were all white men, almost all from the military.

Read more: Visit website

Watch Shock Waves Ripple From SpaceX's Giant Starship Rocket During 3rd Test Flight (Video)

The incredible power SpaceX's Starship megarocket can be visualized in a new video of the rocket's third test flight.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13.

Source: Visit website

NASA's DART Mission Hammered Its Target Asteroid Into A New Shape. Here's How

Now, however, scientists have shown that it seems DART didn't just give Dimorphos a push; it also hit Dimorphos with enough kinetic energy to reshape it.

Originally, Dimorphos would have been an oblate spheroid, which is kind of like a squashed ball. The impact of DART at 5 kilometers per second (3 miles per second) sent shockwaves through the asteroid, resulting in it becoming more elongated and shifting its axis of rotation off-center. The new shape is inferred by astronomers from the light curve of the Didymos–Dimorphos system, which is aligned in such a way that we can see them transiting and eclipsing one another.

Reference: Visit website

3, 2, 1, Blast Off: Space Science Day Takes Off At El Camino College, Honors Astronaut's Legacy - El Camino ...

Extracting DNA from strawberries, building a lightsaber, making slime and battling robots were some of several STEM activities led by El Camino College students on Saturday, March 16 during the 36th Annual Onizuka Space Science Day.

One of the attendees, Ian Gerszewski, listened to retired astronaut Rick Mastracchio talk about his career and what it takes to become an astronaut.

Source: Visit origin

Astronomers Confirm A New 'Trojan' Asteroid That Shares An Orbit With Mars

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) a study led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has confirmed that the asteroid 2023 FW14, discovered last year, is accompanying the red planet in its journey round the sun, ahead of Mars and in the same orbit.

With this new member, the group of Trojans that accompany Mars has increased in number to 17. But it shows differences in its orbit and chemical composition which may indicate that it is a captured asteroid, of a primitive type. The results are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics .

Reference: Found here

Nvidia Announces Project GR00T AI Technology For Human-like Robots

A foundation model is a type of AI system trained on massive amounts of data that's capable of being used for a wide variety of tasks from generating sentences to videos, images, and more.

According to Nvidia, Project GR00T will help humanoid robots "understand natural language and emulate movements by observing human actions — quickly learning coordination, dexterity, and other skills in order to navigate, adapt, and interact with the real world."

Nvidia also announced its Isaac Manipulator and Isaac Perceptor, part of the company's Isaac robotics platform. Isaac Manipulator is a series of foundation models designed for robotic arms, while Issac Perceptor is meant to offer "multi-camera, 3D surround-vision capabilities" for robots designed to take on manufacturing and fulfillment roles.

More details: Visit website

The Future Of The Space Force Isn’t On Earth — It’s In The Solar System

At the ripe age of five, it is clear that the United States Space Force, while dominated by old thinking, still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up, and is split among multiple different areas of focus. The challenge is that it has to grow up fast.

It seems the Force’s leadership are of three minds: those who look down, focusing on ground operations, those who look around at orbital space and those who look up and out.

Those who believe the Space Force should focus on what is happening on the ground refer to its support function for the joint force of all the current branches of the military. This ranges from communications, creating and protecting space-based command and control systems, observation and, in its most visionary (and ominous) form, operation of space-to-ground weapons.

More details: Found here

The James Webb Space Telescope Is Digging Deep Into The Mysteries Of Gas Planets

Just last week, one team announced it may have some updates on the dynamics of gas giant formation, thanks to the JWST. More specifically, the researchers say they've started making headway in answering the question of how long gas giants likely have to form around their host stars before all the gas around those stars fades away.

The team used the JWST to probe what's (a little confusingly) known as the "disk wind." This doesn't really refer to a wind like you may imagine. Rather, it refers to the process of gas leaving a disk around a star. This "disk" would be one filled with different types of material with the potential to give rise to planets. It's thus otherwise known as a "protoplanetary disk."

Reference: Found here

UFO Believers Flock To Quiet French Town Looking For Encounter

Several thousand self-professed awakening individuals made their way to the Zenith Limoges Metropole building in a field off one of the main highways.

The silver, saucer-shaped building is a fitting setting for the three-day conference which features a cosmic line-up of galactic speakers who will be discussing mind-bending moments and "encounters with celestials in altered states of consciousness".

Symposium Exovision is expected to draw 2,200 attendees who have paid between 150 to 190 euros to attend.

The event, organised by a group called Alliances Célestes, or Celestial Alliances, claims to want to prepare and train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials or "new-style encounters".

More details: Visit website

Orbion Space Technology Is One Of 2024's Most Innovative Companies

Michigan-based Orbion Space Technology builds Aurora, a new type of propulsion system that employs what are known as Hall-effect thrusters, which accelerate propellant using an electric field. Companies that send satellites into space on a rocket can use Orbion’s thrusters to maneuver them precisely to their final destination.

At the end of the satellite’s mission, the thruster helps the satellite come down in a safe, controlled way, burning up in the atmosphere without leaving debris behind. The company began shipping the system to customers in 2023.

More details: Found here

NASA Administrator Pays Tribute To Space Pioneer Thomas Stafford

NASA Administrator Pays Tribute to Space Pioneer Thomas Stafford  - NASA

Reference: Found here

Blue Origin Founders Want To Harvest Helium-3 From The Moon

Over billions of years, the surface of the Moon has been bombarded by solar wind, carrying high-energy particles that include a highly coveted resource, helium-3. Although the element is scarce on Earth, it has recently become in demand by several industries, including those working on quantum computing and nuclear fusion reactors.

"There is growing demand for Helium-3 across burgeoning and potentially massive industries," Alexis Ohanian, one of the main investors in Interlune's latest round of funding, said in a statement. "We invested in Interlune because access to the ample cache of Helium-3 and other precious natural resources on the Moon and beyond will unlock or accelerate technological advancements currently hindered by lack of supply."

Source: See here

NASA Asks U.S. Public To Look At Clouds During April 8’s Total Solar Eclipse

NASA Asks U.S. Public To Look At Clouds During April 8's Total Solar Eclipse

People view the solar eclipse from the beach at Palm Cove in Australia's Tropical North Queensland ... [+] on November 14, 2012. (Murray Anderson-Clemence/AFP via Getty Images)

However, April 8's solar eclipse—which will take place from inside a narrow path across North America—brings a unique opportunity for massive citizen science projects.

However, participants are being asked to record cloud conditions at varying times during the day in the days before and after the eclipse—starting now through April 15. The goal is that on April 8, people will measure temperature every five to 10 minutes and clouds every 15 to 30 minutes or whenever they see a change, creating a record of what happens before, during and after the eclipse.

Read more: See here

NASA Artemis Mission Progresses With SpaceX Starship Test Flight

NASA Artemis Mission Progresses with SpaceX Starship Test Flight - NASA

As part of NASA's Artemis campaign to return humans to the Moon for the benefit of all, the agency is working with SpaceX to develop the company's Starship human landing system (HLS), which will land astronauts near the Moon's South Pole during the Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. On March 14, SpaceX launched the third integrated flight test of its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, an important milestone toward providing NASA with a Starship HLS for its Artemis missions.

"With each flight test, SpaceX attempts increasingly ambitious objectives for Starship to learn as much as possible for future mission systems development. The ability to test key systems and processes in flight scenarios like these integrated tests allows both NASA and SpaceX to gather crucial data needed for the continued development of Starship HLS," said Lisa Watson-Morgan, HLS Program Manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Read more: Visit origin

NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare "Active Asteroids"

Some extraordinary asteroids have "activity"—comet-like tails or envelopes of gas and dust. NASA's Active Asteroids project announced the discovery of activity on fifteen asteroids, challenging conventional wisdom about the solar system.

To find these fifteen rare objects, more than 8000 volunteers combed through 430,000 images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. A paper about the results , now published in the Astronomical Journal, includes nine volunteers among the co-authors.

"For an amateur astronomer like me it's a dream come true." said volunteer Virgilio Gonano from Udine, Italy. "Congratulations to all the staff and the friends that also check the images!"

Reference: Visit origin

8 Must-Have NASA Resources For Science Teachers In 2024

8 Must-Have NASA Resources for Science Teachers in 2024

Growing Beyond Earth® (GBE) is a classroom-based citizen science project for middle and high school students about growing plants in space. Curricular materials and resources help you introduce your students to space plant biology and prepare them to participate in the program, through which students have the opportunity to present their findings to NASA Researchers. Materials in English and Spanish .

Data Stories are interactives for high school students that showcase new science imagery and data for a variety of out of this world topics. Ideas for exploration and scientific highlights are included with every story through accompanying video and text.

Reference: Visit website

Terran Orbital Announces Plans To Produce Small Satellites For Geostationary Orbit

WASHINGTON — Satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital announced plans to produce a new line of small satellite buses designed to operate in geostationary Earth orbit.

The company said it will compete in the so-called small GEO satellite market with a new bus named SmallSat GEO for satellites above 500 kg.

Small GEO satellites are an emerging class of spacecraft designed for geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above Earth’s surface. This orbital perch has traditionally been the territory of large, heavyweight communications satellites that beam data to permanently pointed antennas on the ground.

Source: See here