astronomy

NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On Nov. 25, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....

Of the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, one planet in particular has attracted the attention of scientists. This planet orbits the star within the “Goldilocks zone”—a distance where water on its surface is theoretically possible, but only if the planet has an atmosphere. And where there is...

The outer planets of the solar system are swarmed by ice-wrapped moons. Some of these, such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus, are known to have oceans of liquid water between the ice shell and the rocky core and could be the best places in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. A new study published Nov. 24 in Nature...

Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety....

We just live too far apart.

Led by researchers at the University of Maryland and Cornell University, the study charts temperatures across WASP-18b, a massive gas giant classified as an “ultra-hot Jupiter” located 400 light-years from Earth. The team applied a method known as 3D eclipse mapping, also called spectroscopic eclipse mapping, marking the...

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/36650439