Orbital science, astronomy, remote sensing, and what lies beyond the atmosphere.
NASA Ames Research Center has highlighted one of human spaceflight’s strangest sensory details: after astronauts return from a spacewalk, their suits and tools can carry a sharp odor that crews have compared to hot metal, welding fumes, gunpowder and seared steak. The NASA account describes a smell that appears when astronauts come back inside, remove…
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A study in Astronomy & Astrophysics suggests that Earth may avoid being swallowed when the Sun swells through its final giant-star phases. The result comes from updated calculations of how an aging Sun will pull on nearby planets while also losing mass into space. The finding gives a fresh answer to one of astronomy’s oldest…
A study in Geology has traced a hidden lunar impact to tiny crystal grains inside a meteorite from the Moon. The grains point to a major asteroid collision about 3.5 billion years ago, adding a rare new marker to the violent history of the inner Solar System. The clue came from mineral particles so small…
Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed in a NASA announcement that Terzan 5 is a rare survivor from the Milky Way’s earliest building phase. The object sits deep in the galaxy’s crowded central bulge, where dust and packed star fields usually make ancient history hard to read.…
