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Stars Don't Obliterate Their Planets (Very Often)
06.06.13 -
Stars have an alluring pull on planets, especially those in a class called hot Jupiters, which are gas giants that form farther from their stars before migrating inward and heating up.
Now, a new study using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope shows that hot Jupiters, despite their close-in orbits, are not regularly consumed by their stars. Instead, the planets remain in fairly stable orbits for billions of years, until the day comes when they may ultimately get eaten. -
Spitzer Sees Milky Way's Blooming Countryside
06.05.13 -
New views from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show blooming stars in our Milky Way galaxy's more barren territories, far from its crowded core.
The images are part of the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (Glimpse 360) project, which is mapping the celestial topography of our galaxy. -
NASA Mission Data Contributes to New Antarctic Map
06.05.13 -
Researchers used a new dataset to produce a detailed map of Antarctica from the ice surface down to the bedrock below.
The product was a result of work led by the British Antarctic Survey, compiling decades of geophysical measurements such as surface elevation measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, known as ICESat, and ice thickness data collected by Operation IceBridge. -
Cassini Sees Precursors to Aerosol Haze on Titan
06.06.13 -
Scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini mission have confirmed the presence of a population of complex hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, that later evolve into the components that give the moon a distinctive orange-brown haze.
The presence of these complex, ringed hydrocarbons explains the origin of the aerosol particles found in the lowest haze layer that blankets Titan's surface. -
Curiosity Mars Rover Nears Turning Point
06.05.13 -
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission is approaching its biggest turning point since landing its rover, Curiosity, inside Mars' Gale Crater last summer.
Curiosity is finishing investigations in an area smaller than a football field where it has been working for six months, and it will soon shift to a distance-driving mode headed for an area about 5 miles (8 kilometers) away, at the base Mount Sharp. -
Black Holes Abundant Among the Earliest Stars
06.05.13 -
By comparing infrared and X-ray background signals across the same stretch of sky, an international team of astronomers has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe.
Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes in the infrared, researchers have concluded one of every five sources contributing to the infrared signal is a black hole. -
IRIS Mission to Launch in June
06.04.13 -
The goal of NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, is to understand how the energy travels through the interface region of the sun– energy that helps heat the upper layer of the atmosphere, the corona, to temperatures of 1 million kelvins (about 1.8 million F), some thousand times hotter than the sun’s surface itself. IRIS is scheduled to launch from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on June 26, 2013. -
Swift Satellite Maps Nearest Galaxies in UV Light
06.03.13 -
Astronomers at NASA and Pennsylvania State University have used NASA's Swift satellite to create the most detailed ultraviolet light surveys ever of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two closest major galaxies.
The images include light ranging from 1,600 to 3,300 angstroms, which is a range of UV wavelengths largely blocked by Earth's atmosphere. -
LADEE Arrives at Wallops for Moon Mission
06.04.13 -
The NASA Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) arrived on June 4, 2013 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility to begin final processing for its trip to the moon later this year.
LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. -
Boeing Completes New Spacecraft, Rocket Milestones
05.31.13 -
The Boeing Company of Houston, a NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner, recently performed wind tunnel testing of its CST-100 spacecraft and integrated launch vehicle, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The testing is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, intended to make commercial human spaceflight services available for government and commercial customers.
The Bedrock Beneath