Space

A special exemption allowed a NASA-funded weather balloon to launch as planned Oct. 1, despite the ongoing government shutdown that began that day. But news about the balloon, and an exoplanet-hunting experiment on board, got a little confused after touchdown. When the balloon landed Oct. 2 in farmland in Hale County, Texas after a flight high in Earth’s atmosphere, several local news…

Citizen scientists have found several new “odd radio circles<” or ORCs, in distant, enormous galaxy clusters — and through their discoveries, scientists are learning more about how these huge ring-like structures form. ORCs were first identified only six years ago, in 2019, by Anna Kapinska of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory while perusing observations made by the…

Scientists have found that a sample of the moon brought to Earth in 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts contains a ratio of sulfur isotopes very different to what we see on Earth. It’s a discovery that could either tell us about the giant impact that formed the moon, or about the moon’s earliest history. When the six Apollo missions that landed on the moon returned home, some samples of lunar…

If you’re a space buff but haven’t already seen the 1995 film “Apollo 13,” it’s worth the watch. It recreates the near-disaster mission marked by an oxygen tank explosion and emergency ocean-landing back to Earth starring Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert and Bill Paxton as Fred Haise: the heroic crew at the center of the story. But in addition to…