23 December 2020
Harmful stellar flares might not prevent life on exoplanets after all, new study says
...helps block harmful levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from reaching the ground. If allowed to penetrate through our planet's atmosphere unheeded, it could have a damaging impact on surface life. But despite the damage these unpredictable and often...
19 May 2021
Scientists unexpectedly find heavy metal vapour in comets throughout our Solar System, and beyond
... have even more in common than previously thought. “All of a sudden we understood that gaseous nickel is present in cometary atmospheres in other corners of the Galaxy,” says co-author Michał Drahus, also from the Jagiellonian University. “How cool...
10 February 2022
SpaceX Starlink satellites fall out of sky after storm
... a geomagnetic storm the following day,” SpaceX admitted in a statement issued a week later. “These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. The speed and severity of the storm resulted...
11 June 2021
Then there were 3: ESA selects revolutionary Venus mission EnVision
... probe the planet’s internal structure and gravity field as well as investigate the structure and composition of the atmosphere. The instruments will work together to best characterise the interaction between the planet’s different boundaries – from...
November 2020
The alien hunter’s field manual
... us to determine whether life exists on exoplanets that we can characterise. So far, measurements have been mostly restricted to the atmosphere of about a dozen hot Jupiters. The next few decades will see multiple experiments that, when used...
07 March 2018
World's first firing for ESA's air-breathing electric thruster
... xenon was replaced in stages by a nitrogen–oxygen air mixture until it could ignite solely from the collected atmospheric propellant. “This result means air-breathing electric propulsion is no longer simply a theory but a tangible, working concept...
