Space

A US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut were forced to make an emergency landing after their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned on the way to the International Space Station (ISS).

Curiosity is a set of scientific instruments mounted on a robot much like a car. It is currently located in the Gale crater on the surface of Mars. Curiosity has been on the red planet for seven years now, looking for signs of life or the potential for it. This mission has not always gone smoothly for NASA, who sent Curiosity to the crater in 2011.

Last week, the Hubble telescope stood down from observing and put itself into “safe mode” after one of its gyroscopes, which keeps it aimed at objects of scientific interest in space, died.

On Sunday, October 7th, at 7:21 p.m. PDT, SpaceX successfully launched the SAOCOM 1A satellite from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite was deployed about 12 minutes after liftoff.

The Earth’s moon was discovered in 1610, following which four of Jupiter’s moons were found orbiting the planet (it was only later that the remaining 12 moons were observed).

Physicists have detected something mysterious coming from Antarctica’s frozen ground, a sort of cosmic ray - a light energy particle that has blasted its way through space, into the Earth.

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.” - Stephen Hawking

There are a growing number of companies, and their investors, who believe that the time for consumer-grade space flights are upon us. For example, Elon Musk’s interstellar-focused business, SpaceX, has put all of its weight behind its newest and biggest rockets for planned off-world launches. Obviously, these journeys may not be able to go much further than Earth’s orbit at this point.

As a planet, Saturn is perceived as swathed in softly-colored clouds, possibly in bands of an extremely fuzzy definition that surrounds the planet in uniform hooped bands. However, astronomers and astrophysics have been aware of an odd anomaly within these clouds. It exists near the planet’s northern pole and has notably pointed corners, not seen elsewhere on the planet. As there are six of these intersections, the anomaly resembles a hexagon.

It was Neil Armstrong who, after stepping on the moon, said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” But it definitely seems as though modern-day science and the researchers of today have already achieved goals bigger than ever imagined!

Astrophysicists have concluded that the history of Earth and its bodies was written in fragments of the asteroids that were in the same area at the time. Those objects may bear the ‘scars’ of the sun’s actions during this period. Subsequently, some of these asteroids crashed into Earth. They form a convenient source of information that allow humans to infer plausible narratives as to what went on in the solar system during its infancy.

Just over 400 years ago, two stars in our galaxy collided in space. This event was observed by astronomers on Earth, although they were not able to detect all the spectacular details and fallout of this event.