Heavens

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope continues to make significant progress, successfully completing a series of sunshield vent tests that validate the telescope's sunshield design.

In an experiment exploring the chemical processes that might be going on in the hazy atmosphere enshrouding Saturn's largest moon, a team of scientists discovered a variety of complex organic molecules – including amino acids and nucleotide bases, the most important ingredients of life on Earth.

The molecules discovered include the five nucleotide bases used by life on Earth to build the genetic materials DNA and RNA: cytosine, adenine, thymine, guanine and uracil, and the two smallest amino acids, glycine and alanine. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus should not be one of the most promising places in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. Instead, it should have frozen solid billions of years ago. Located in the frigid outer solar system, it's too far from the sun to have oceans of liquid water -- a necessary ingredient for known forms of life -- on its surface.

Water ice on asteroids may be more common than expected, according to a new study that will be presented today at the world's largest gathering of planetary scientists.

The fact that Venus Express can make these measurements at all is remarkable. The spacecraft was not designed for it and so does not have instruments capable of directly sampling the atmosphere. Instead, radio tracking stations on Earth watch for the drag on the spacecraft as it dips into the atmosphere and is decelerated by the Venusian equivalent of air resistance.

For scientists, supernovae are true superstars -- massive explosions of huge, dying stars that shine light on the shape and fate of the universe. Being superstars you'd think we know all about them, but we actually know very little, even though we have studied them for 50 years.

A University of Delaware researcher is helping to design instruments for a robotic space probe that will go where no other has gone before: the sun.

William Matthaeus, professor of physics and astronomy at UD, is involved in NASA's Solar Probe Plus project, which is slated to launch by 2018.

The Sun's activity has recently affected the Earth's atmosphere and climate in unexpected ways, according to a new study published today in the journal Nature. The study, by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Colorado, shows that a decline in the Sun's activity does not always mean that the Earth becomes cooler.

The GOES-13 satellite keeps a vigilant eye on the Atlantic Ocean and eastern U.S. and this morning at 5 a.m. EDT it saw System 97L organize into the seventeenth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean season. The only catch is that it is actually a subtropical depression, so it is currently known as Subtropical Depression 17 (TD17).

New research by a University of Victoria PhD student is challenging popular theory about how part of our solar system formed. At today's meeting of the prestigious Division of Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, California, Alex Parker is presenting evidence that, contrary to popular belief, the planet Neptune can't have knocked a collection of planetoids known as the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt to its current location at the edge of the solar system.

A $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to upgrade and expand a set of radio frequency antennas at Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA) http://www.ovsa.njit.edu/ has been awarded to NJIT. The new facility is expected to help scientists better understand the nature of solar flares which greatly interest government, industry and the military.

Giving vitamin D supplements to healthy children with normal vitamin D levels does not improve bone density at the hip, lumbar spine, forearm or in the body as a whole, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review.

This is an artist's conception of the MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars.

(Photo Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

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The GOES-13 satellite passed over a low pressure area designated as "System 97L" earlier today and captured a visible image of the low in the eastern Caribbean Sea. System 97L appears in a good place for development into a tropical depression in the next day or two.