Just weeks before the historic encounter of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars in October 2014, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet. To protect sensitive equipment aboard MAVEN from possible harm, some instruments were turned off during the flyby; the same was done for other Mars […]
While Alaska and Hawaii are the only two states in the U.S. that will be able to observe even a portion of the solar eclipse that is occurring in the South Pacific today, the solar event will be less than awe-inspiring for Alaskans as we will only be able to see the eclipse if we […]
On Tuesday, March 8th, the earth will again experience the fly-by of 2013 TX68, a 100-foot in diameter asteroid discovered in 2013, when it passed by our planet that year. Once again, that asteroid is expected to pass by earth safely without posing a threat. It is estimated to pass the planet at a distance of approximately 3 […]
For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at Earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window to the cosmos. Gravitational waves carry information about their […]