It’s not every day, or every year for that matter, that we get to see a really bright comet. Many of us, including the author of this article, remember comet Hale-Bopp that adorned Earth’s skies in the first months of 1997. Since then we’ve had several comets bright enough to Read more…
Some seven months ago, a NASA spacecraft called InSight was launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket and headed to Mars (Figure 1). If all goes well, the spacecraft will land on the Martian surface at around 8pm UK time this Monday 26th November and begin its science investigation. InSight is a fixed lander (see Figure 2 below), a much simpler affair than the Curiosity rover that arrived in 2012 and continues its trek across the floor of Gale crater to this day. Mobility, is however, not required for the specific aim of the mission.
Where do meteorites come from? This question has been occupying the scientific community ever since it was realised that these “rocks from the sky” are, in fact, pieces of other worlds arriving on our planet from deep space. New research done by scientists at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Read more…
One of the European Space Agency’s flagship missions reached its grand finale on Friday 30 September 2016. After 20 years in development, a 10-year trip around the Solar System and two years on station at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta mission drew to a close at 12:19 BST when the spacecraft Read more…
Astronomers have made the exciting discovery of an Earth-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone of our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.25 light years (1.3 parsec) from the Sun. The new-found world, designated Proxima b, is a little more massive than the Earth, implying that it Read more…