Science

A comet that was predicted to become bright enough to see with the naked eye at Halloween seems to be disintegrating right before our eyes. It’s called C/2024 S1, discovered on September 27, a rare Kreutz sungrazer comet whose trajectory is due to bring it within just 1.2 million kilometers (750,000 miles) of the Sun

WASHINGTON — A member of the Crew-8 mission hospitalized for an unspecified medical issue after splashdown has been released after an overnight stay, NASA said Oct. 26. In a statement, NASA said the astronaut, whose identify has not been disclosed, was released from Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital after an overnight stay. “The crew member

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained to see details in images that escape the human eye. Now an AI neural network has identified something unusual about a face in a Raphael painting: It wasn’t actually painted by Raphael. The face in question belongs to St Joseph, seen in the top left of the painting known

In the constellation of Cygnus, some 7,800 light-years from Earth, lurks a real space oddity. There, a black hole in a system named V404 Cygni repeatedly engages in behavior that has simultaneously baffled and delighted scientists. Now it’s whipped a brand new trick out of its seemingly endless arsenal: an unseen binary companion, a star

WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster came within a second of aborting a “catch” landing attempt on the latest Starship test flight, according to audio posted online, apparently inadvertently, by Elon Musk. Musk posted a three-minute video Oct. 25 on X, the social media network he also owns, showing action from a video game that

A relative newcomer to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has broken a six-year drought in the search for the next prime oasis in a desert of boring ol’ composite numbers. At an insane 41,024,320 decimal digits in length, writing the entire number would take months to write in full. To keep things brief

A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust. This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the Universe. But

Suspended in the relic of an ancient sea beneath southern Arkansas, there may be enough lithium for nine times the expected global demand for the element in car batteries in 2030. A collaborative national and state government research team trained a machine learning model to predict and map the lithium concentrations of salty water deep

Despite huge advances in cyber security, one weakness continues to overshadow all others: human error. Research has consistently shown human error is responsible for an overwhelming majority of successful cyber attacks. A recent report puts the figure at 68%. No matter how advanced our technological defences become, the human element is likely to remain the

“There is every reason to believe China’s BeiDou global navigation satellite system has the ability to imitate American GPS signals and those of Europe’s Galileo,” said Professor Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas Radionavigation Lab. Humphreys was speaking at The Department of Transportation’s annual Civil GPS Service Interface Committee meeting, held for the public

For most of our evolutionary history, human activity has been linked to daylight. Technology has liberated us from these ancient sleep-wake cycles, but there is evidence sunlight has left and continues to leave its mark. Not only do we still tend to be awake in the daytime and sleep at night, we can thank light

A large communications satellite has broken up in orbit, affecting users in Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and adding to the growing swarm of space junk clouding our planet’s neighbourhood. The Intelsat 33e satellite provided broadband communication from a point some 35,000 km above the Indian Ocean, in a geostationary orbit

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Given its dominance in the launch market and Starlink’s explosive growth in satellite communications, what impact will SpaceX have on the optical terminal business? At the Satellite Innovation conference here, panelists discussed SpaceX’s plans, announced in March, to sell its optical or laser communications terminals to satellite manufacturers. Optical terminal suppliers

In the middle of the night, the world can sometimes feel like a dark place. Under the cover of darkness, negative thoughts have a way of drifting through your mind, and as you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, you might start craving guilty pleasures, like a cigarette or a carb-heavy meal. Plenty of evidence

Ships passing in the night used Morse code sent with lanterns and shutters to communicate. That same basic principle has allowed NASA to communicate with Psyche, its mission to a metal-rich asteroid in the main belt. However, the ‘light’ was a version of heat, and instead of being able to see each other, Psyche is

Recording-breaking carbon emissions in 2023 could be a sign that nature’s carbon removal systems are failing, a study awaiting peer-review warns. With last year’s atmospheric CO2 growth going hand-in-hand with record heat, an international team of researchers found high temperatures are likely to have “had a strong negative impact” on the ability of land-based ecosystems

TAMPA, Fla. — Luxembourg’s government has backed a major chunk of OQ Technology’s ongoing 30 million euro ($32 million) Series B funding round, according to the Luxembourg-based operator of small narrowband satellites.  OQ Technology announced an investment Oct. 21 from the Luxembourg Space Sector Development (LSSD), which the government co-runs with SES, a multi-orbit satellite fleet

Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we waited in line, anticipating deeper frights to come once

One of the great mysteries of the Universe is where all the metal actually comes from. We know it’s forged in cosmic fire – but which fires in particular, and in which proportions, is a little bit more difficult to pin down. A rare kind of supernova devoid of hydrogen and helium is a known

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX launched 20 spare OneWeb satellites Oct. 20 to strengthen the resiliency of French operator Eutelsat’s rival low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband network. Eutelsat said it had successfully contacted each satellite following lift-off on a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:13 a.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Eutelsat spokesperson Katie Dowd

Kindergarten-age kids excel at lots of things, but focusing efficiently on a task is not typically one of their strong suits. Research suggests many children at this age find it hard to concentrate on details most relevant to an assignment, often spending time and energy collecting information that won’t help them. According to a new

It’s not every day that humans get to walk on the Moon. In fact, it’s been more than 50 years since humans last set foot on the lunar surface, during NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Such a momentous occasion as a return to Earth’s dusty gunpowder satellite requires nothing short of the fanciest of

TAMPA, Fla. — Intelsat 33e has lost power in geostationary orbit and the satellite is no longer providing communications for customers across Europe, Africa and parts of Asia Pacific, its operator announced Oct. 19. Intelsat said it is working with satellite maker Boeing to address the anomaly, but “believe it is unlikely that the satellite will

Lightning storms are some of the most spectacular, wild, and dramatic events our world has to offer – but the effects are not just directed towards Earth’s surface. According to new research, lightning storms can rip high-energy “killer” electrons out of the planet’s radiation belt and fling them in all directions. It’s a new link

Bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida and Barataria Bay in Louisiana are exhaling microplastic fibers, according to our new research published in the journal PLOS One. Tiny plastic pieces have spread all over the planet – on land, in the air, and even in clouds. An estimated 170 trillion bits of microplastic are estimated

MILAN — Refurbishment of ground systems like a mobile launch platform could become another factor in the schedule for the Artemis 2 mission that NASA says is still planned for launch next September. A report by the Government Accountability Office Oct. 17 found that work on the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program, which includes the

Cats have a reputation for aloofness (and flooffiness), but if you and your feline friend aren’t bonding, maybe you’re just not speaking their language. Never fear – research from 2020 has shown that it’s not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more. Not the human way, by baring your teeth, but the

In 1995, Caltech researchers at the Institute’s Palomar Observatory first observed what appeared to be a brown dwarf orbiting Gliese 229 – a red dwarf star located about 19 light-years from Earth. Since then, this brown dwarf (Gliese 229 B) has mystified astronomers because it appeared too dim for its mass. With 70 times the

Our research group has bred corals able to better survive marine heatwaves. Our work, now published in Nature Communications, shows that it is possible to improve coral heat tolerance even within a single generation. We did this using selective breeding: a technique used by humans for thousands of years to produce animals and plants with

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Commerce announced long-awaited changes to export control rules for space technologies, a move aimed at bolstering American competitiveness in the global space industry. The new regulations will make it easier for U.S. companies to sell satellites, launch vehicles, and other space-related technologies to close allies, including the United Kingdom,