For those who remember, the discovery of possible signs of ancient microbial life on Martian meteorite ALH 84001 sparked enormous debate in 1996, temporarily convincing a great many people that we had at last found conclusive evidence of life on Mars. As the years rolled on, alternate explanations appeared to answer the questions raised by […]
JPL News Release February 25, 2014 A collage of radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2006 DP14 was generated by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., on the night of Feb. 11, 2014. Delay-Doppler radar imaging revealed that the asteroid is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) long, 660 feet […]
NASA reported today on an intriguing line of inquiry in the hunt for evidence of liquid water running on the surface of Mars. Once thought to out of the question, recent years have seen a number of images which strongly suggest the presence of seasonal water flows of what is speculated as a very salty […]
Having concluded that the Mars Science Laboratory has already answered the key question it was sent to explore, i.e. that Mars did once host conditions which were suitable for life, even as it only now embarking on its trek to Mt. Sharp, NASA hosted a Telecon today to discuss its Science Definition Team report for […]
An intriguing announcement from JPL: “Astronomers, including a team member from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have detected the first population of radio bursts known to originate from galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. The sources of the light bursts are unknown, but cataclysmic events, such as merging or exploding stars, are likely […]
The history of human exploration, particularly in the age of sail, can be defined by one curious tendency. Often the strongest motivation for launching a new expedition, was to find out just what happened to the last expedition. And the one before that. Somehow, the appeal just never fades. Likewise, even the casual science fiction fan can attest […]
Conditions on Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life The announcement yesterday was almost anticlimactic. The components identified in an analysis of Martian rock by the Curiosity rover indicates that the planet was once capable of supporting life. Although there has yet to be any evidence of ancient microbial life uncovered, excluding the controversial ALH4001 meteorite found here on Earth, could we […]
We are currently living in what many consider a golden age of astronomical discovery in which ongoing analysis of data produced by various space telescopes such as Kepler and Wise is constantly rewriting our understanding of the cosmos both distant and close. In the latter category comes yesterday’s announcement from JPL that astronomers have discovered Earth’s third nearest star […]
A team of scientists working at NASA’s JPL and Cal-Tech studying Jupiter’s moon Europa, have found evidence of a chemical exchange between the frozen, radiation swept surface and a liquid ocean which is believed to exist beneath an ice pack nearly 60 miles thick. Using spectrographic analysis of surface ice taken from the Keck II telescope […]
After a week which began with a North Korean nuclear test and ended with a meteor strike over the skies of Russia which NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory now estimates released nearly 500 kilotons of energy, followed by a near miss with a much larger asteroid why not start off a new week with something a little less ominous, perhaps another stunning image from the […]
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