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Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a "new" galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure. As the merging...

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. Practically all the projects related to manned flights to the moon are absent from an updated version of the Federal Space Programme for the years 2016 through 2025 drafted by the Federal Space Agency after the downwards revision of its budget, Izvestia daily said on Tuesday referring to the document it had obtained. "As it follows from the text of the draft programme, which Roscosmos has submitted to the government for review, a decision was taken to sacrifice the lunar programme that was named a strategic goal for future development of Russian space research," the newspaper...

London (dpa) - British astronaut Tim Peake has apologized for dialling the wrong number from space. "I'd like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying 'Hello, is this planet Earth?' - not a prank call ... just a wrong number!" Peake posted on Twitter. Peake, 43, a former helicopter pilot, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on December 15. He was accompanied by American Tim Kopra, 52, and Russian Yury Malenchenko, 53. On Friday, the ISS passes over the Spanish-French border soon after sunset in England, Peake wrote on his blog. And stargazers are in...

Black holes earn their name because their gravity is so strong not even light can escape from them. Oddly, though, physicists have come up with a bit of theoretical sleight of hand to retrieve a speck of information that's been dropped into a black hole. The calculation touches on one of the biggest mysteries in physics: how all of the information trapped in a black hole leaks out as the black hole "evaporates." Many theorists think that must happen, but they don't know how. Unfortunately for them, the new scheme may do more to underscore the difficulty of the larger...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida on Monday with a payload of communications satellites before the reusable main-stage booster turned around, soared back to Cape Canaveral and landed safely near its launch pad in a dramatic spaceflight first. The successful mission, capped by delivery of all 11 satellites to orbit for launch customer ORBCOMM Inc (ORBC.O), unfolded in just over 30 minutes and marked a pivotal reversal of fortunes for privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, founded by high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Black holes can only grow if they have a gas disc to feed on NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr ======================================================================================================== Black holes can only grow to 50 billion times the mass of the Sun, before they lose their only source of 'food' and stop growing. Scientists discovered that black holes have a size limit, as when it gets so big, the gas which feeds the great void loses its energy, and falls into the unknown. A researcher from the University of Leicester analysed the disc of gas which surrounds supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. He found that...

Artist's concept of a Falcon 9 booster stage descending to a landing site at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX Assuming SpaceX's plans come to fruition, a Falcon 9 flight from Cape Canaveral on Sunday will end with a vertical rocket-assisted landing at an abandoned Cold War-era launch facility a few miles away. SpaceX confirmed the rocket's first stage, a slender cylindrical kerosene-fed rocket body standing 156 feet tall, will aim for a controlled touchdown at a landing pad the company rented from the U.S. Air Force less than six miles south of the Falco 9's Complex 40 launch pad. Liftoff...

The dark dunes, named the "Bagnold Dunes," skirt the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp and lie on the alien road of Curiosity's daring trek up the lower portion of the layered Martian mountain. Today, Dec 14, Curiosity is exploring a spectacular spot dubbed the "Namib Dune" shown in our new photo mosaic above. Ascending and diligently exploring the sedimentary lower layers of Mount Sharp, which towers 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky, is the primary destination and goal of the rovers long term scientific expedition on the Red Planet. ... Before crossing the dune field, the team is...

Just days before President Obama flew to France to discuss new ways to regulate U.S. industries to death in the name of climate change, he signed a law that will let companies extract as much minerals and other materials as they want, and keep the profits, from asteroids and the moon.

NASA is looking to get back on track with the first U.S. delivery to the International Space Station in nearly eight months. An unmanned Atlas rocket is scheduled to blast off at 5:55 p.m. Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with 7,400 pounds of supplies. But clouds and rain could push the launch into Friday, when the weather worsens.

PARIS - President Obama joined leaders from 150 nations on Monday in pledging action against climate change, kicking off a historic two-week gathering that Obama called a "turning point" in the battle against one of humanity’s gravest threats. ...."The growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other," Obama said in a speech at the Le Bourget conference center in Paris’s industrial outskirts. "What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet." Obama, who has staked his...

American space agency, the NASA had recently observed flares of X-rays from a black hole, which goes against the conventional notion that they are compact particles with such huge gravity that even light can't escape. Last month NASA announced that two of its space telescopes caught a huge burst of X-ray spewing out of a super massive black hole. These flairs appeared to be be triggered by the eruption of a charged particle from the black hole, which according to conventional belief doesn't let anything out. The latest findings are in accordance with the theory of Indian astrophysicist Abhas Mitra...

Experts Concerned We’ve Sent Sexist Messages to Space We’re not doing enough to promote diversity to aliens. During the British Science Festival, a group of experts pondered whether or not some of the images we have sent into space might be too sexist and too white — which would clearly be sending the wrong message to any aliens out there. Yes, seriously. Dr. Jill Stuart, considered an expert on the “politics” of space, expressed particular concern about a plaque on the 1972 Pioneer 10 spacecraft that featured a naked man and woman. “The plaque shows a man raising his hand...

Concept of an asteroid redirect mission. Credit: NASA ==================================================================================================================================== The grizzled asteroid miner is a stock character in science fiction. Now, a couple of recent events - one legal and the other technological - have brought asteroid mining a step closer to reality. The legal step was taken when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bill titled H.R. 2262—SPACE Act of 2015. The bill has a number of measures designed to facilitate commercial space development, including a provision that gives individuals or companies ownership of any material that they mine in outer space. According to one estimate,...

ESO's VISTA survey telescope has spied a horde of previously hidden massive galaxies that existed when the Universe was in its infancy. By discovering and studying more of these galaxies than ever before, astronomers have for the first time found out exactly when such monster galaxies first appeared. The newly discovered massive galaxies are marked on this image of the UltraVISTA field. [RED CIRCLES] ================================================================================================================ Astronomers have detected something baffling at the furthest frontiers of our observable universe: massive galaxies -- lots of massive galaxies -- that shouldn't even exist. Depending on the wavelength you observe the universe in,...

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation known as the SPACE Act of 2015 (The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act), which recognizes and promotes the rights of U.S. companies to engage in the exploration and extraction of space resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies. That’s a huge win for private space exploration companies, especially for companies with upcoming plans to tap into the economic potential of the moon. That’s because the legislation, in its definition of “space resources,” is sufficiently broad to include resources found on the lunar surface. In short, the moon could now be...

United Launch Alliance said Monday it did not submit a proposal in a competition to launch a U.S. Air Force GPS navigation satellite, apparently relinquishing the contract to rival SpaceX, the only other company certified to launch the mission. The Air Force wanted both companies to bid on the launch, setting up the first competition for the launch of a national security mission since Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket programs in 2006 to form ULA. ULA cited requirements in the request for proposals, which the Air Force released Sept. 30, and a congressionally mandated ban on RD-180 engines...

Phil PlaitNovember 16, 2015 A new study says that violent space weather that could cost $2 trillion in damage is more common than previously thought In the years 774 and 993, the Earth was attacked from space. Not by aliens, but by a natural event—and it was very, very powerful. Whatever it was, it subtly altered the chemistry of our planet’s atmosphere, creating trace amounts of radioactive elements like chlorine-36, beryllium-10, and carbon-14. And those provide the clue to what the event was: Those isotopes are created when high-energy protons slam into our air. That means the source must have...

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