Science

A United Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed into blue skies from a Japanese launch centre Monday at the start of a seven-month journey to Mars on the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. The liftoff of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, starts a rush to fly to Earth’s neighbor that is scheduled to be followed

A huge asteroid is making its way toward Earth and it will pass by our planet next week. Dubbed as Asteroid 2020 ND, it is classified as Near-Earth Object (NEO) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) by NASA. It is estimated to be 160 metres or 520 feet in diameter but there is no cause to

Spacewalking astronauts completed their part of a three-year power upgrade to the International Space Station on Thursday, replacing six more outdated batteries with powerful new ones. It was the third spacewalk in as many weeks involving battery work by NASA’s Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy. Running more than an hour ahead of schedule, they managed

A solar probe built by the European Space Agency and NASA has delivered the closest photos ever taken of the Sun’s surface, revealing a landscape rife with thousands of tiny solar flares that scientists dubbed “campfires” and offering clues about the extreme heat of the outermost part of its atmosphere. “When the first images came

Scientists planning to build one of the world’s largest telescopes on a Hawaii mountain said Wednesday construction won’t begin until at least next year. TMT International Observatory Vice President Gordon Squires told Hawaii News Now that the coronavirus pandemic presents a complicated and unsafe situation for moving ahead. “With the pandemic and other factors that

The United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday it would delay the launch of its “Hope” Mars probe for a second time, again due to bad weather. The probe was originally due to be launched from Japan on Wednesday but had been postponed until Friday for the same reason. “After extensive meetings, the @UAESpaceAgency and @MBRSpaceCentre,

Holding its own against aerospace giants like pan-European Airbus Space or French-Italian Thales Alenia, German minnow OHB has carved out a space as a national champion in satellite building. Its latest coup was claiming a hefty slice of business from contracts signed in early July by the European Space Agency (ESA) as it builds up

Astronomers have spotted one of the most powerful and oldest explosions that took place nearly 10 billion years ago. The explosion that has been named SGRB181123B occurred just 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang – the cosmological event that led to the formation of our universe. Astronomers claim that the discovery offered a “rare

The Moon may actually be 85 million years younger than previous believed as a new study on the natural satellite’s magma ocean offers new insight into the age of Earth’s closest celestial neighbour. It was earlier believed that the Moon may be 4.51 billion years old, formed nearly 60 million years after the formation of

The United Arab Emirates has postponed to July 17 the launch of its mission to Mars due to weather conditions at the launch site in Japan, the UAE government communications office said on Tuesday. The UAE’s Hope Probe was due to set off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 12:51am UAE time on Wednesday (02:21

After sending humans into orbit and landing a probe on the Moon, China is aiming for another milestone in its space ambitions with the launch of a Mars rover next week. China is among a trio of nations, with the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, sending a mission to the Red Planet this

Mars may now be considered a barren, icy desert but did Earth’s nearest neighbour once harbour life? It is a question that has preoccupied scientists for centuries and fired up sci-fi imaginings. Now three space exploration projects are gearing up to launch some of the most ambitious bids yet to find an answer. Scientists believe

Astronomers have captured a red dwarf star called “AD Leonis” that is found to have massive flares — one of them was even 20 times larger than the solar flares emitted by our own Sun. The star is notably just 16 light-years away from Earth. However, it was seen with an extreme large flare, termed

Lucky skywatchers across the world are currently able to see a newly discovered comet, dubbed Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE at predawn. This comet NEOWISE will reach its maximum point in the dawn sky on July 11 before disappearing below the horizon. But there’s some good news for skywatchers, especially for the ones living India as

Britain is betting that satellite operator OneWeb will help it boldly go into a post-Brexit era. But it faces formidable challenges to complete a working constellation and rebuild a collapsed venture that has proved a money pit for investors. The British government and Indian telecoms conglomerate Bharti Enterprises said last week they would together put

Last year, China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover discovered a unique, green-tinged gel-like substance in a crater after the Chang’e 4 mission landed on the far side of the Moon. It set off a series of speculations among experts, who tried to determine what the substance was. Based on gathered data, researchers have now published an analysis