NASA's Maven spacecraft around Mars has been declared dead after six months of radio silence. Maven was launched in 2013 to study the red planet's atmosphere. It fell silent in December after passing behind Mars. NASA confirmed Wednesday that the mission is over. Data indicated that the spacecraft went into a fast spin, which disrupted its orbit and drained the onboard batteries. A review board convened by NASA earlier this year concluded that the spacecraft is useless and unable to be recovered. Besides studying Martian weather, Maven helped relay information from NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the surface.
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Get set for a rare blue micromoon this weekend. It's when a blue moon that's also the most distant and smallest-looking full moon of the year rises. The brilliant star Antares will photobomb Sunday's spectacle for a celestial three-for-one. A blue moon occurs every two to three years when a second full moon squeezes into a single month. May 1 saw this month's first full moon. The upcoming full moon will be farther from Earth than usual at a distance of 252,360 miles. That will make the moon seem a bit smaller and dimmer.
Neptune's mysterious, far-flung moon Nereid may be the last of the planet's original companions. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology reported Wednesday that they used NASA's Webb Space Telescope to study the moon in 2024. Their observations suggest Nereid is no party crasher like Neptune's jumbo moon, Triton, which barged in from the solar system's frigid outskirts billions of years ago. Triton's arrival scattered the planet's original moons and wrecked everything, but these researchers believe Nereid survived by escaping into its extreme, elliptical orbit around Neptune. Their findings appear in the journal Science Advances.
Happy Vernal Equinox, almost! Monday will be the first day of spring, but it can be confusing to say that because there are a couple different times this comes up. Monday is, astronomically, the first day of spring because the vernal equinox happens at 5:24 PM.
Professor Gerard Williger and two colleagues from England recently discovered an arc of galaxies in distant space.
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The South Pole Wall, as it has been dubbed, is situated along the southern border of the cosmos from the perspective of Earth, and consists of thousands of galaxies, hydrogen gas, dust and dark matter.
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Scientists have referred to the objects as ORCs, or "odd radio circles."
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Betelgeuse — which is pronounced Beetlejuice — usually is the 9th-brightest object you can see from earth, but it has been dimming rapidly since October.
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A new study suggests intelligent life is likely to inhabit a star system drastically different than ours.