Space News Weekly Recap: India’s first private spaceflight, ISRO Mars return, and more

Space News Weekly Recap: India’s first private spaceflight, ISRO Mars return, and more

ISRO’s plans for Mars return During a presentation on ISRO’s future missions, Anil Bharadwaj, Director of the Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory, announced that the space agency planned to send a probe to the red planet. According to the initial plans charted out by the Indian space agency, it will build a lunar lander and rover […]

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James Webb Space Telescope resumes science operations after glitch

James Webb Space Telescope resumes science operations after glitch

MIRI mechanism issue On August 24, Webb engineers discovered that a grating wheel mechanism which supports the telescope’s “medium-resolution spectroscopy” (MRS) mode was showing signs of increased friction. The wheel is only used for one of the telescope’s four modes, which includes imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, coronagraphic imaging and MRS. After preliminary health checks and investigations, […]

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Webb captures ‘haunting portrait’ of the pillars of creation

Webb captures ‘haunting portrait’ of the pillars of creation

This is not an illustration of dementors from the Harry Potter universe, nor is it a digital artist’s imagination of what spirits look like. This is actually an image of the pillars of creation—clouds of interstellar gas in the Eagle Nebula—captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in the mid-infrared spectrum. These pillars were first […]

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Webb captures galaxies merging through shroud of dust

Webb captures galaxies merging through shroud of dust

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently released an image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, showing two galaxies plunging into one another in a galactic merger. The galactic merger is named IC 1623 and lies around 270 million light-years away from us in the constellation Cetus. Starburst caused by galactic merger By colliding into […]

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Space news weekly recap: NASA’s UFO team, Martian bacteria and more

Space news weekly recap: NASA’s UFO team, Martian bacteria and more

The word “space” may conjure up images of planets, stars and other heavenly bodies that are light-years away from us, but that is because we forget that “space” is just 100 kilometres above us at any given time. And things that happen in space can sometimes have a profound impact on life on Earth. For example, a NASA […]

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Webb captures ‘unprecedented’ image of galaxies merging near supermassive black hole

Webb captures ‘unprecedented’ image of galaxies merging near supermassive black hole

According to Johns Hopkins University, this image offers an “unprecedented opportunity to observe how billions of years ago galaxies coalesced into the modern universe.” “We think something dramatic is about to happen in these systems. The galaxy is at this perfect moment in its lifetime, about to transform and look entirely different in a few […]

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Space news weekly recap: Returning asteroid samples, birth of a black hole and more

Space news weekly recap: Returning asteroid samples, birth of a black hole and more

Sometimes it is hard to remember that we and everyone we know live on a rock that is rapidly moving across an endless and mysterious place that we still know very little about—space. From a gamma-ray burst sweeping across our planet due to the birth of a star to how some stars give a “warning” […]

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Space news weekly recap: Martian microbes, black hole ‘burp’, and more

Space news weekly recap: Martian microbes, black hole ‘burp’, and more

According to research published in the journal Nature Astronomy, ancient Mars could have had an environment which was capable of harbouring underground microscopic organisms. Elsewhere, astronomers say they have witnessed a “never seen before” event where a black hole “burped” out stellar material three years after consuming a star. Read about all that and more […]

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James Webb Space Telescope captures curious concentric rings in space

James Webb Space Telescope captures curious concentric rings in space

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to reveal images that give a look at the distant universe. The latest is an image of concentric dust rings emitted by a pair of stars, which are over 5,000 light years away from Earth. The pair is collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140 and Webb Space telescope captures the […]

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Webb, Hubble capture detailed images of DART impact

Webb, Hubble capture detailed images of DART impact

These observations of DART’s intentional crash with Dimorphos mark the first time that the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope simultaneously observed the same target. “Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together. For the first time, Webb and Hubble have […]

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