ScienceNews - Space
Reports on space missions, technology developments, and industry milestones
A Greek Star Catalog From the Dawn of Astronomy, Revealed
Physicists at SLAC used powerful X‑ray imaging to reveal a hidden star catalog by Hipparchus inside the 6th‑century Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a palimpsest from Saint Catherine’s Monastery. The recovered Greek poem "Phaenomena" and its appended coordinates provide the earliest known systematic map of constellations, dating back to around 150 B.C. The discovery settles a long‑standing debate about Ptolemy’s reliance on Hipparchus’s data and showcases how modern particle‑accelerator technology can resurrect lost scientific knowledge. Researchers plan to scan the remaining pages with AI‑enhanced algorithms to extract further details.
A Massive Clump of Dark Matter May Lurk in the Milky Way
Scientists have identified a massive dark‑matter clump roughly ten million times the Sun’s mass located about a kiloparsec (3,260 light‑years) from Earth. The discovery emerged from precise timing measurements of a pair of nearby pulsars, whose pulse‑rate shifts indicated an...
Seismometers Can Track Falling Space Junk
Seismic networks in southern California recorded shock‑wave vibrations from the re‑entry of China’s Shenzhou‑15 capsule on April 2, 2024. By analyzing arrival times at 127 stations, scientists reconstructed the breakup and derived a trajectory about 30 km south of the U.S. Space Command...
First Maps of the Sun’s Outer Boundary May Help Predict Solar Storms
Scientists have produced the first verified maps of the Sun’s Alfvén critical surface, the outer boundary where solar plasma breaks free as solar wind. By merging Parker Solar Probe’s in‑situ measurements with remote observations, researchers traced the surface’s spiky, corrugated...
Against the Odds, a Burbling Lava Planet Retains an Atmosphere
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected a substantial atmosphere on the ultra‑hot lava world TOI 561b, a planet twice Earth’s mass that orbits its star in under ten hours. The planet’s measured dayside temperature is about 900 °C cooler...
An Asteroid Could Hit the Moon in 2032, Scattering Debris Toward Earth
A building‑sized asteroid, 2024 YR4, has a roughly 4 percent chance of striking the Moon in December 2032, with a 1 percent chance that the impact will eject debris into near‑Earth space. The collision could unleash energy comparable to 6 million metric tons of TNT—about...
New Hubble Images May Solve the Case of a Disappearing Exoplanet
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a bright dust cloud around the nearby star Fomalhaut, indicating a collision between two asteroid‑sized planetesimals about 30 km in diameter. The impact provides the first direct observation of colliding planetesimals outside the Solar System and...
A New Hunt for an Earth Analog Begins
The Terra Hunting Experiment, launching in the Canary Islands, will deploy the HARPS3 spectrograph to conduct a decade‑long radial‑velocity survey of up to 50 Sun‑like stars. Led by Nobel laureate Didier Queloz, the project aims to detect at least two...
