Category: Space

Space posts

nasa-x-59-supersonic
Estimated read time 3 min read
Space Engineering

NASA schedules First Flight of X-59 Experimental Aircraft in 2024

October 13, 2023

NASA’s groundbreaking Quesst mission has made the decision to delay the inaugural flight of its X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft until 2024. This experimental aircraft represents a unique collaboration between NASA researchers and prime contractor Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, requiring complex engineering and innovative solutions.

james-webb-ngc-346-smc
Estimated read time 3 min read
Space

NASA’s James Webb Telescope Clicks an Ethereal View of NGC 346

October 10, 2023

After presenting a near-infrared view that showcased both chilly and heated dust, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has now shifted its focus to NGC 346’s mid-infrared domain. In doing so, it has unveiled a spectacle of gas and dust, adorned with luminous patches teeming with youthful protostars.

hubble-space-telescope-light-bursts-galaxies
Artwork illustrating a highly magnetised neutron star (a magnetar) orbited by asteroids. Magnetars have exceedingly powerful magnetic fields, trillions of times stronger than Earth's own field and even more powerful than regular neutron stars or pulsars. Recently, astronomers have suggested that asteroids might be orbiting some of these stellar corpses, leading to the emission of so-called fast-radio bursts (FRBs). The idea is that asteroids orbiting within the magnetar's wind - a stream of fast particles emitted from its surface - carve a wake in the wind, leading to the generation of an electric current around the wake. When the magnetar's wind crosses the wake, a magnetic disturbance is created which generates an extremely intense and narrow beam of radio energy. In 2020, astronomers detected the first FRB from a magnetar - called SGR 1935+2154 - located within our own galaxy. The entire event was over in a fraction of a second.
Estimated read time 3 min read
Space

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope finds bizarre explosion in unexpected place

October 10, 2023

NASA Hubble Space Telescope – LFBOTs are among the most brilliant visible-light events in the cosmos, resembling unexpected camera flashbulbs going off in the darkness of space. Since the first discovery in 2018, only a handful of these events have been detected, occurring roughly once a year. These luminous bursts briefly illuminate the universe before fading away, leaving astronomers eager to understand their origins.