NASA is preparing to send a unisex toilet to the International Space Station (ISS) that better accommodates female astronauts. A recurring problem with microgravity toilets is they’d been designed predominantly with men in mind, due to the historically higher proportion of male astronauts. The new toilet, called the ‘universal waste management system’ (UWMS), is designed to … Read more
The Kepler mission has spotted thousands of exoplanets since 2014, with 30 planets less than twice the size of Earth now known to orbit within the habitable zones of their stars. Launched from Cape Canaveral on March 7th 2009, the Kepler telescope has helped in the search for planets outside of the solar system. It … Read more
European Space Agency enlists Airbus to help it build a Mars rover called ‘Fetch’ that will find and retrieve rock samples on the Red Planet The Airbus firm has won the next phase of the contract to develop the rover It will travel more than 9 miles across the red planet to pick up rock … Read more
A galaxy far, far away! NASA’s New Horizons travels 4.3 billion miles to perform the first interstellar ‘parallax’ experiment that shows stars are positioned differently in space than when viewed from Earth NASA’s New Horizons performed the first interstellar ‘parallax’ experiment It snapped images 4.3 billion miles from Earth of Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 Due … Read more
A fifth state of matter, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), has been created in the microgravity of the International Space Station for the first time. This exotic and rare form of matter is only produced when a gas of boson like particles are cooled to temperatures just above absolute zero (about -459.67F). Creating the … Read more
NASA and ESA find evidence that the first stars and galaxies formed much earlier than researchers thought, beyond the reach of the Hubble Space Telescope Hubble can see the universe back to within 500 million years of the Big Bang Experts used the telescope to determine the age of the first stars and galaxies The … Read more
Giant hexagonal storm that has raged around Saturn’s north pole for over four decades is caused by massive cyclones deep in the planet’s atmosphere, study shows Researchers created a computer model to simulate conditions found on Saturn They then ran the simulation to see if a hexagonal polar storm would be formed They found these … Read more
Elon Musk has said SpaceX’s Starship rocket that could one day carry humans to Mars is the company’s ‘top priority’ from now on. In a company email, Musk urged SpaceX employees to accelerate progress on Starship ‘dramatically and immediately’, a week after its historic first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch … Read more
NASA has awarded a $187 million contract to Northrop Grumman to build a crew module that astronauts will stay in before landing on the Moon. Known as the habitation and logistics outpost (HALO), it will be the size of a small flat and form part of the Lunar Gateway, a small space station that will … Read more
Former NASA astronaut and geologist Kathy Sullivan has become the first woman to dive to lowest point on Earth, known as Challenger Deep, inside the Mariana Trench. Sullivan, 68, emerged from the submersible DSV Limiting Factor (LF) on Sunday, which performed a successful expedition at more than 35,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. LF, built … Read more