We live in a solar system where there is only one star -the Sun. But a team of volunteers, along with two amateur astronomers, has discovered such a planet which has four Suns. The planet is called PH1 (full form Planet Hunter 1). Want to know some more mysterious information about this planet? Read more below.
Water contamination is a major issue around the world. In most cases, it leads to a number of infections and diseases. It has now been found out that in the port city of Karachi in Pakistan, a brain-eating amoeba is spreading panic, already having taken a toll of 10 lives in the past few months. The amoeba is scientifically known as ‘Naegleria fowleri.’
Mars rover Curiosity is roaming around on Mars since its landing. The world has been waiting eagerly to get further updates about the rover and the planet. And now, NASA has revealed some latest update. While, Curiosity scooped the Martian soil, it found something “mysterious”. It’s mysterious because NASA scientists till now haven’t understood what that mysterious thing could be. While Curiosity found that “mysterious” thing, it also took picture of that thing. Check inside.
In every two years or so, red planet Mars and Earth reach their closest point, called “Opposition”, when Mars can be as close as 55,000,000 km from Earth. And every two years, space agencies take advantage of this orbital alignment to send spacecraft to the red planet. It usually takes 260 days or around 9 months (10-15 days more or less) to reach the red planet Mars from Earth (based on rocket’s velocity). Mars rover Curiosity which is now wandering on Mars took a few more days than 8 months to reach Mars. But still, 8 months is long time. In order to reduce travel time, the development of rocket’s engines is a must. Scientists have already engaged themselves to develop rocket’s engines. Researchers at University of Huntsville in Alabama are also trying to find out a way to diminish the travel time. The good news is they have found “Dilithium Crystals” which they think could cut the travel time to Mars down to as little as six weeks. In other words, it’ll take around six weeks to reach Mars from Earth. Get more unknown news inside.
We reported earlier that NASA and SpaceX were ready to launch the first unmanned cargo resupply flight towards International Space Station (ISS). And the time has nearly come. National space research center NASA and space transport company SpaceX is going to launch the Dragon capsule towards ISS from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 8:35 PM EST, October 7 (that’s today).
With the help of the German Aerospace Center (in short Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and its Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (in short MASCOT) lander, the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (in short JAXA) will be making its second mission via Hayabusa 2 to collect samples from 162173 1999 JU3 asteroid’s surface. The purpose of this mission, according to New Scientist, is to find out the answer of fundamental questions about the origins of life on Earth, the best targets for space mining and how to deflect a threatening space rock. The mission is supposed to launch in 2014. Get the details inside.
Before Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, astronomers could barely see galaxies up to 7 billion light-years away. Observations with telescopes on the ground were not enough to establish how galaxies formed and evolved in the early universe. But, after Hubble was sent to space, it merged itself into exploring space. It started to capture photographs of distant galaxies over times. Recently, NASA has published an eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) image by combining 2,000 images captured by Hubble space telescope.
On August 3, 2004, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft that will orbit the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest planet of the solar system, Mercury. Can you remember, what was the name of that space craft? It’s MESSENGER (an acronym of MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging). However, MESSENGER successfully entered Mercury’s orbit on March 18, 2011 and since then it has been studying the planet’s chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. Recently, MESSENGER has revealed the chemical diversity on Mercury’s surface.