Comet Atlas’s Exquisite Death
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the sharpest view yet of the breakup of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS). The telescope resolved roughly 30 fragments of the fragile comet on 20 April and 25 pieces on 23 April. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt...
Asteroid 1998 OR2’s 6 million km miss
This GIF, composed of observations by the Virtual Telescope Project, shows asteroid 1998 OR2 (the central dot) as it traversed the constellation Hydra five days before its closest approach to Earth. CREDIT: Dr. Gianluca Masi (Virtual Telescope Project) Yesterday...
Organic Compounds found in Allan Hills Meteorite ALH84001
Figure 1. A rock fragment of Martian meteorite ALH 84001 (left). An enlarged area (right) shows the orange-coloured carbonate grains on the host orthopyroxene rock. CREDIT: Koike et al. (2020) Nature Communications. The Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo...
Roscosmos launched the Progress MS-14 resupply mission
CREDIT: Screen Capture from Roscosmos stream Finally, Roscosmos launched the Progress MS-14 resupply mission on April 25 at 01:51 AM UTC from Baikonur. Progress MS-14 reached the space station after a quick flight of only three hours and twenty minutes (just 2...
SpaceX launched another 60 Starlink satellites
CREDIT: SpaceX webcast SpaceX launched another 60 Starlink satellites on April 22 at 7:30 PM UTC onboard a Falcon 9 rocket that took off from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. This was the seventh Starlink launch which brings the number of operational and healthy...
Iran launched their first military satellite Noor-1
CREDIT: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, via Associated Press Iran launched their first military satellite on April 22nd at 03:59 AM UTC. Noor-1 was launched into orbit by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on the first flight of a Qased rocket. Iranian launches...
NASA’s Swift Mission Tallied Water From Interstellar Comet Borisov
Comet C/2020 F8 SWAN, Taken by Gerald Rhemann on April 27, 2020 at Farm Tivoli, Namibia CREDIT: Gerald Rhemann From Venus, we now turn to Comet 2I/Borisov. This interstellar asteroid has been a target of opportunity for pretty much anything that could point...
Atmospheric tidal waves maintain Venus’ super-rotation
Images from the Akatsuki spacecraft unveil what keeps Venus’s atmosphere rotating much faster than the planet itself. CREDIT: NASA/JPL While unrelated to Peplowski’s work, our first story starts at Venus. This world is currently orbited by a Japanese mission...
Carnival of Space #660-661
Check out this week’s sampling of space-related stories from our colleagues and friends!
A star that had a brush with a giant black hole and lived to tell the tale through exclamations of X-rays
CREDIT: X-ray: NASA/CXO/CSIC-INTA/G.Miniutti et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss; Press Image, Caption, and Videos Getting too close to your host can be dangerous, no matter who or what you are. From planets too close to their host star, we now turn to a star...
Join the Crew!
Escape Velocity Space News