Astronomy

Here's a thought experiment. What would happen if you were on the International Space Station, folded up a paper airplane, and threw it from the station? According to a new paper, it would fall from orbit in just 3.5 days, but still keep aerodynamic stability until about 120 km. Then it would heat up and combust at about 90-110 km altitude. It's a fun idea, but there are actual practical uses to probe the density of the atmosphere or test thin-film space technologies.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can tell us a lot about the subjects of its observations if it spends enough time with them. That includes lonely rocks on the edges of our solar system, such as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) Quaoar. Recent observations using the NIRCam on JWST and pre-published on arXiv by researchers at the University of Central Florida, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Kyoto University add a plethora of new data to our understanding of this enigmatic object, including insights into what might be causing its ring system and its hydrocarbon atmosphere.

The long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory has delivered some preliminary observations of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae field. 47 Tuc is the Milky Way's second-brightest globular cluster, second to Omega Centauri. The Rubin Observatory's data demonstrates the telescope's promising scientific potential.

Autism has at least four subtypes, an analysis of more than 5,000 children’s genes, traits and developmental trajectories has shown

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The 'Buck Moon' will be the farthest full moon from the sun in 2025.

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully established a transmission-reception optical link with NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment onboard its Psyche mission, located 265 million kilometres away, using two optical grounds stations developed for this purpose in Greece.

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Face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 and open star cluster NGC 6939 share

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As the Axiom-4 mission approaches its two-week mark before returning to Earth, the private space mission crew discusses science and pierogis.

A protest at a congressional office building highlighted future research findings that vast cuts to science will erase

Scientists had assumed that the ice in space was purely amorphous, but new experiments show it can have a partly crystalline structure similar to ice on Earth.

"You can think of it as a cosmic pool game. We might miss the pocket if we don't consider all the variables."

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An AI system trained on videos of operations successfully guided a robot to carry out gall bladder surgery on a dead pig, with minimal human assistance

An AI system trained on videos of operations successfully guided a robot to carry out gall bladder surgery on a dead pig, with minimal human assistance