compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

It’s the End of a World as We Know It Astronomers have witnessed a star gobbling up a planet, offering the first direct glimpse of a gnarly process called planetary engulfment that most likely awaits Earth in the deep future. Scientists serendipitously spotted a gas planet — like Jupiter but possibly larger…more

This Is Not an Extraterrestrial Signal. This Is Just a Test. In the 1997 movie “Contact,” Jodie Foster plays an astronomer, Ellie Arroway, who detects an alien radio signal from outer space. Eventually the fictional Dr. Arroway goes on a trip through hyperspace to commune with an alien presence appearing in the form of her dead father…more

The United Arab Emirates Is Heading for the Asteroid Belt Building off the success of its Hope spacecraft, which is still circling and studying Mars, the United Arab Emirates announced on Monday plans for an ambitious follow-up mission: a grand tour of the asteroid belt…more

NASA’s Webb Finds Water, and a New Mystery, in Rare Main Belt Comet NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has enabled another long-sought scientific breakthrough, this time for solar system scientists studying the origins of Earth’s abundant water. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers have confirmed gas – specifically water vapor…more

Webb, DART Missions Win AIAA 2023 Premier Awards The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) honored NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) missions and contractors as three of the 2023 recipients of its most prestigious awards, the AIAA Premier Awards. The awards recognize the individuals in aerospace AIAA deems as most influential and inspiring…more

NASA Picks Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lander for Artemis V Mission On their second try, Jeff Bezos and his rocket company have won a contract to take NASA astronauts to the moon. NASA announced on Friday that it had awarded a contract to Mr. Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, to provide a lunar lander for a moon mission that is scheduled to launch in 2029…more

Scientist makes alien weather forecast for distant planet A scientist’s “alien weather forecast” for a distant planet has helped a NASA-coordinated team gain a new understanding of it. Dr Michael Roman, from the University of Leicester, made the observations about the atmospheric conditions on the planet GJ 1214b, which was discovered in 2009…more

NASA Sees ‘Otherworldly’ Wreckage on Mars With Ingenuity Helicopter The object resembles a flying saucer that crashed on Mars. And indeed it is. But it doesn’t belong to aliens. Instead, the wreckage is the work of NASA, a component called a backshell that detached during the landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of the red planet in February 2021….more

James Webb telescope: Icy moon Enceladus spews massive water plume Astronomers have detected a huge plume of water vapour spurting out into space from Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. The 504km-wide (313 miles) moon is well known for its geysers, but this is a particularly big one. The water stream spans some…more

Welsh space firm devises ‘shuttlecock’ heatshield A Welsh space start-up has developed a novel heatshield to enable it to re-use satellites brought back to Earth. It’s a large flexible sheet that can be folded tightly for launch but then spring out like a shuttlecock to protect a spacecraft when it returns. Cardiff-based Space Forge…more

Meteosat-12: Europe’s new weather satellite takes first photos The first images from Europe’s new weather satellite, Meteosat-12, have just been released. The spacecraft, which sits 36,000km above the equator, was launched in December and is currently in a testing phase that will last most of this year…more

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Peers Behind Bars A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image – a composite from two of Webb’s instruments…more