ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATEEl Niño has finally arrived according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associations. The report by the NOAA was issued nearly a year after it was forecast that El Niño would occur sometime last year.
Scientists believe that the Red planet once had more water on its surface than is found today in Earth's Arctic Ocean. However, over time Mars has lost 87% of this water to space.
Should the vapors be cause for concern? Well it certainly has been a question that has crossed NASA and the astronauts’ aboard the International Space Station minds. Since the snafu on Wednesday, Feb. 25, when a routine spacewalk led to water leaking into space station flight engineer Terry Virts’ helmet, the team has been buzzing with news of whether or not they will be cleared to walk again this weekend.
NASA has revealed that new data from the Dawn spacecraft indicates that there may have once been short-lived water flows on the second largest body in the asteroid belt, known to us as Vesta.
While some parts of the nation are fighting Winter storms of snow and sleet, eyes this week are o water of the liquid variety. And more specifically, researchers and reporters are looking towards the molecule’s importance in developing life, as well as its origins story too. News this week of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta Mission, revealed a recently published study reporting that the sustenance of our Earth and of all life, water, may in fact have not originated on comets from the Kuiper Belt as once believed. And what’s more, now that researchers have debunked false origin stories of the miracle molecule, they’re now beginning to question whether water alone can make a planet habitable for life, or if there are other mitigating conditions as well.
After an arduous ten year journey throughout some tough terrain of space, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta mission set records this past summer for being the first spacecraft to orbit a comet in mid-flight. And while many expected the mission to reveal a bit more insight into the behavior and composition of comets from the outer edges of our solar system, no one expected to learn exactly how Earth came to be so unique and the perfect host to life, only three planets away from our sun.
Earlier this week Australians caught a glimpse of a bizarre sight in their morning sky, something that’s not only rare, but also quite strange to see. Looking like a vortex for clouds, with a looming rainbow trapped in the center, Australians across the continent snapped shots of what they thought was an alien spacecraft, or rather a hole in the atmosphere. Taking to social media, the strange images garnered much attention, but as soon as the mystery was up, the strange solution was found.
With only a matter of days standing between now and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta Mission landing on its host Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, researchers and the ESA are looking towards what the future of the mission may mean for Earth. As the first successful orbit around a comet, speeding through our solar system on its mission around the sun, the ESA is searching for answers not only on the origin of our Earth, but also of our solar system—something they say they will find in a new sci-fi film released this morning, Oct. 24.
Saturn's 'Death Star' Moon Might Have an Ocean Saturn's Moon Mimas, also referred to as the 'Death Star' moon because of its resemblance to the Star Wars space station, may have a secret that no one knew about previously.
Recently accepted for publication by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, the research lead by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyzed the relative intensity and devastation caused by droughts since 1000 AD and found that though the 2014 summer in California was particularly out of the ordinary even in the driest of areas, it did not quite compare to the drought of 1934.