Astronomy

The Da Vinci Glow

For decades, satellites have played a crucial role in our understanding of the remote polar regions. The ongoing loss of Antarctic ice, owing to the climate crisis, is, sadly, no longer surprising. However, satellites do more than just track the accelerating flow of glaciers towards the ocean and measure ice thickness.

New research highlights how ESA’s CryoSat mission has been used to uncover the hidden impact of subglacial lakes – vast reservoirs of water buried deep under the ice – that can suddenly drain into the ocean in dramatic outbursts and affect ice loss.

How can Uranus be used to indirectly study its moons and identify if they possess subsurface oceans? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated using passive radar sounding methods from Uranus to study its five largest moons: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the formation and evolution of Uranus and its largest moons despite a spacecraft not currently visiting Uranus.

When galaxies run out of primordial hydrogen and helium, they cease star formation, shifting to primarily long-lived red stars. These galaxies are considered "red and dead." It usually takes billions of years for galaxies to run out of hydrogen, but now astronomers using JWST have found examples of galaxies that have already stopped forming stars just 700 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier than predicted by cosmological models.

Paramount+ will serve up a balanced blast of silly and serious sci-fi stories with Season 3 of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

Amazon's first big batch of Project Kuiper broadband satellites will lift off a week from now, if all goes according to plan.

The commercial astronauts onboard SpaceX’s Fram2 mission are flying closer to Earth’s poles than anyone has before, offering an intriguing opportunity for auroral science

Kilmer leaves a legacy of engaging film roles including Batman and even a Mars astronaut.

As the cult classic sci-fi monster movie turns 25, we look at why it eclipses everything Vin Diesel's antihero has done since.

Nostalgia for video games seems to be strongest for those played during childhood – at least for Nintendo Switch players

Nostalgia for video games seems to be strongest for those played during childhood – at least for Nintendo Switch players

Sometimes, the best way to learn how to do something is just to do it. That is especially true if you're learning to do something using a specific methodology. And in some cases, the outcome of your efforts is something that's interesting to other people. A team from across the European Union, led by PhD candidate Domenico D'Auria, spent a few days last September performing just such an exercise - and their work resulted in a mission architecture known as the Planetary Exploration Deployment and Research Operation - Venus, or PEDRO-V.

NASA's Perseverance Rover is an ambitious mission. Along with its day-to-day exploration, the rover carried an experimental rotorcraft and is also caching samples for eventual return to Earth. But there's another aspect to its mission that's hidden in the glare of its ambitions. The rover is busy testing five different spacesuit materials.

"All together, we have a better sense of what this building-sized asteroid is like."

High-speed drones will be put to the test in the extreme Arctic environment as part of a project to assess how quickly glaciers in Greenland are retreating

High-speed drones will be put to the test in the extreme Arctic environment as part of a project to assess how quickly glaciers in Greenland are retreating

Feedback is baffled – baffled! – as to why Facebook owner Meta's attempts to suppress a previous employee's memoir sent the book rocketing to the top of the book charts

A cost-cutting initiative in the world of passenger aviation could see flight-deck staff reduced to just a captain, with their co-pilot replaced by AI. It may save money, but it's a risk too far, argues Paul Marks

Feedback is baffled – baffled! – as to why Facebook owner Meta's attempts to suppress a previous employee's memoir sent the book rocketing to the top of the book charts

A cost-cutting initiative in the world of passenger aviation could see flight-deck staff reduced to just a captain, with their co-pilot replaced by AI. It may save money, but it's a risk too far, argues Paul Marks