Space

Two flagship spacecraft captured striking new images of Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, including a surprisingly sharp snapshot from a camera never meant for scientific imaging. Discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope in Chile, 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed visitor from another solar system, following 1I/’Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. In November, both…

German Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel has penned a letter urging the government of Chile to halt the development of a green hydrogen plant in the vicinity of one of the world’s top astronomical observatories. In the letter, Genzel and 30 other world-leading astronomers urge Chilean leaders to protect the pristine, unpolluted night sky above Cerro Paranal, an…

Supermassive black holes are notoriously messy eaters, but the behemoth at the heart of spiral galaxy NGC 3783 really takes the cake — and then flings it out into space at a fifth the speed of light. Astronomers recently spotted a gale of hot, charged particles erupting from this black hole in the aftermath of a powerful X-ray flare that occurred just a few hours earlier. As one of the…

Can the U.S. beat China to the moon, and will NASA have the resources to do so? These were just some of the considerations raised when SpaceX billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman once again appeared before a Senate committee Wednesday (Dec. 3) for a bid at NASA chief. This wasn’t Isaacman’s first rodeo before the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation…