Space
Planet Naming Rights Not for Sale, Says International Astronomical Union
Astronomy has a branding problem. It’s an incredibly exciting time for the field, as astronomers are turning up planets orbiting distant stars by the cosmic boatload.
Stories by John Matson
Space
Neighborhood Watch: New NASA Mission Will Propel Detailed Investigations of Nearby Exoplanets
A relatively low-cost space mission, scheduled to launch in 2017, will attempt to identify planets circling nearby stars
The Sciences
More Belt-Tightening in Store for NASA as STEM Education Programs Face Consolidation
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has just released President Obama’s budget request for 2014. It will take some time for the budget’s full impacts on science to be dissected and debated, but here is a quick look at how one closely watched agency—NASA—fared.The president’s budget, which is subject to Congressional negotiation and approval, would provide $17.7 billion for NASA, down a bit from the previous year...
The Sciences
NASA Getting into the Asteroid-Moving Business
Dissatisfied with the current state of the solar system, NASA is looking to do a little remodeling.The space agency is angling to capture a small asteroid and drag it closer to Earth for human exploration, the Associated Press reported April 6...
Space
Preventing the Next Chelyabinsk
More asteroid-detecting telescopes are coming soon
Space
Dark Matter Signal Possibly Registered on International Space Station
The onboard Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has detected what is thought to be dark matter’s signature antimatter particles, but it cannot yet pin down their origin
Space
Anybody Home? Next-Generation Telescopes Could Pick Up Hints of E.T.
Next-generation telescopes could pick up hints of extraterrestrial life
The Sciences
Cosmos Study Dashes Hope for New Neutrino
First particle physicists discovered “a boring old Standard Model Higgs boson,” as my colleague Michael Moyer put it, meaning that the particle hewed closely to theoretical predictions and offered little in the way of guidance to new and exciting physics...
The Sciences
Voyager 1′s Whereabouts: No News, but Plenty of Noise
Tracking the location of the Voyager 1 spacecraft can be exhausting for a science journalist, and I can only imagine how confusing it gets for the interested reader.
The Sciences
Quasars at 50: Luminous Cosmic Beacons Remain a Puzzle
Fifty years ago, in the journal Nature, astronomer Maarten Schmidt published a brief paper noting that a star-like object known as 3C 273 was simply too far away to be a star in the Milky Way...
Space
Anybody Home? Next-Gen Telescopes Could Pick Up Hints of Extraterrestrial Life
New studies assess the possibility of detecting biomarkers with planned ground- and space-based telescopes
Space
Astronomer Locates Previously Unseen Neighbor to the Sun
When NASA launched the WISE satellite in 2009, astronomers hoped it would be able to spot loads of cool, dim objects known as brown dwarfs. Bigger than a planet, a brown dwarf is not quite a star, either—it is too small to sustain the nuclear fusion reactions that turn hydrogen to helium...
The Sciences
Naked-Eye Comet Pan-STARRS Climbing into Northern Skies
This year is shaping up to be a great one for amateur sky-watchers. Toward the end of 2013, astronomers expect the recently discovered Comet ISON (officially designated C/2012 S1) to shine mightily as it approaches the sun—possibly glowing as bright as the full moon...
Space
Commercial Spaceflight Industry Drifts Back to Earth
As the brash, stylish new kid on the block, SpaceX was sure to win its share of admirers. But last week’s launch hiccup showed that the private space operator, helmed by Elon Musk, has a few issues to work out, just like stodgy old NASA.Don’t get me wrong: SpaceX has done unbelievably impressive things...
The Sciences
Has NASA Become Mars-Obsessed?
Planetary exploration is stuck in a Martian rut
Space
Diminutive Discovery: Moon-Size Exoplanet Circling Sunlike Star Smallest Yet
The newly detected world is smaller than any of the solar system’s planets and just a bit larger than our moon
The Sciences
Could Another Chelyabinsk-Scale Meteor Sneak Up on Us?
When a 17-meter asteroid barreled into Earth’s atmosphere over central Russia on February 15, releasing a powerful shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people, many observers wondered how such a momentous event could arrive unheralded...
The Sciences
Fermi Satellite Tracks Cosmic Ray Origins back to Supernova Remnants
The cosmos is full of surprises—not a week goes by without some group of astronomers announcing a perplexing new discovery that upends theory or expectation.
Space
What Do We Know about the Russian Meteor?
Meteor researcher Margaret Campbell-Brown recaps the latest research into the cause of this morning’s fireball over Chelyabinsk
The Sciences
Hundreds Reported Injured in Blast from Meteor Strike over Russia [Video]
A meteor fireball lit up the morning sky over Chelyabinsk in central Russia, producing a shock wave that shattered windows and injured an estimated 500 1,000 people.** Although much of the parent object likely burned up in the atmosphere, Russian authorities say that several meteorite fragments have already been recovered, according to the Interfax news agency.A preliminary analysis posted to the Web site of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that the object that struck Earth's atmosphere was a few meters in diameter, "the weight of the order of ten tons [and] the energy of a few kilotons," according to a Google translation.* That would make the Chelyabinsk event a fairly common occurrence, although such strikes usually occur over less-populated regions, not cities of more than a million people...
