ULA launches classified payload for NRO
On December 11 at 01:09 UTC, United Launch Alliance launched a Delta IV Heavy from SLC-37B at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The payload was classified.
SpaceX’s SN8 makes (mostly) successful test flight
On December 9th at 22:45 UTC, SpaceX did a suborbital test of their Starship at their compound at Boca Chica, Texas. Starship SN8’s twelve and a half kilometer hop was successful, mostly.
China launches GECAM satellite pair
On December 9th at 20:14 UTC, a Long March 11 rocket took off, carrying a pair of Gravitational Wave High-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) satellites.
Do Uranus’s Moons Have Subsurface Oceans?
Using images from Voyager and magnetic field calculation, scientists determine the likelihood of Uranus’ moon having subsurface oceans, and the results are promising.
Space weather discovery puts ‘habitable planets’ at risk
In a new study using radio telescopes, astronomers have realized that Proxima Centauri is even more violent than previously thought, which has consequences for possible planets that orbit this system.
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Updates Quarter-Century Jupiter Mystery
Scientists have been using data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to solve mysteries about Jupiter left from analysis of Galileo data taken 25 years ago.
That young but already evolved entirely self-made galaxy
Observations taken of the elliptical galaxy C1-23152 show that this distant elliptical galaxy seems to have formed by the time the universe was just 1.8 billion years old.
Ice-Rich Flow Features in Martian Southern Hemisphere Reveal Effects of Recent Climate Cycles
In a new paper in the journal Icarus, researchers detail the finding of another large reservoir on Mars, this one of water ice.
Hubble Pins Down Weird Exoplanet with Far-Flung Orbit
HD 106906 b is an exoplanet 336 light-years away, 11 times the size of Jupiter, and possibly an analog of our own not-yet-discovered Planet 9.
This Week in Sky Watching: December 10 – 17
This Week in Sky Watching: Geminids meteor shower, total solar eclipse, potential aurorae, and a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.
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