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NASA’s newly appointed science and Earth science lead says there is “more to plan” when it comes to figuring out next priorities for the agency’s aging satellite fleet. Katherine Calvin is the first NASA chief scientist to also act as the agency’s senior climate advisor, a role created in February 2021. Calvin is serving in … Read more
When China’s Chang’E-5 probe visited the Moon in December of 2020, it didn’t just collect a sample of lunar material to return to Earth. While it was there, the mission took observations of the surrounding lunar rock – data vital for contextualizing the sample in future studies. Those observations have turned out to be … Read more
Earth and Jupiter don’t have a lot in common. One is relatively small, rocky, and habitable. The other is absolutely enormous, completely lacking in solidity, and raging with colossal storms. Yet, if you look at some satellite pictures of marine phytoplankton blooms here on Earth next to pictures of atmospheric turbulence at Jupiter’s poles, it … Read more
We can all let out a collective sigh of relief. With its primary mirror array fully unfolded, the major components of the beleaguered James Webb Space Telescope are now deployed, and it continues to calmly make its way to its destination. The deployment, completed on 8 January 2022, marks a pretty important milestone for … Read more
Work for the James Webb Space Telescope is just beginning. On Saturday (Jan. 8), the new observatory, the largest space telescope ever built, successfully unfolded its final primary mirror segment to cap what NASA has billed as one of its most complicated deployments in space ever. The Webb mission team is now turning its attention … Read more
Scientists have been doing some great work when it comes to peering back through billions of years to figure out what ancient Earth would have looked like, and a new study reveals that the earliest conditions on our planet were probably even more hostile than originally imagined. In particular, researchers now think that we’ve … Read more
Following the time of the dinosaurs, it might well be that the evolution of flowering plants drove the explosion in the diversity of life on Earth, according to a 2021 paper. Most of the plants we now eat, drink, wear, and build with are of the flowering variety. They’re called angiosperms, which roughly translates from … Read more
Before Earth and the other planets in our Solar System existed, the Sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study. Those rings of dust may have prevented Earth from growing into a “super-Earth” – a type of planet that is about twice the size of Earth and … Read more
We can all breathe a bit easier now. In spite of a launch bedeviled by problem after problem, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is finally in space, making its way to its new home. And if you needed a little reassurance that this is the case (which is totally understandable), the European Space Agency … Read more
Those two orbs we see in the sky during the day and night have even more of an influence on the animals and plants on Earth than you might think. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon really does appear to affect flora and fauna activity, although the exact mechanisms by which this happens … Read more