Tag Archives: Astronomy

A South African man who won the chance to be the first black African in space has died in a motorbike crash before turning his dream into reality, his family announced Sunday. Mandla Maseko, a part-time DJ, and candidate officer with the South African Air Force, was nicknamed “Afronaut” after …

Galactic winds are believed to have a major impact on how mysterious black holes affect the development of galaxies around them, but scientists are as yet baffled by how exactly this powerful phenomenon occurs. Scientists have discovered the composition of the powerful galactic winds emanating from supermassive black holes, according …

The planet is currently at its closest to Earth, meaning that it can be spotted in the sky without any special equipment. And while it looks beautiful enough already looked at with the naked eye, peering through binoculars or a small telescope could offer a detailed look at the planet. …

Nasa is to allow tourists to visit the International Space Station from 2020. The US space agency said it would open the orbiting station to tourism and other business ventures. There will be up to two short private astronaut missions per year, said Robyn Gatens, the deputy director of the …

Over the last decade, scientists have established that as the inside of the Moon cooled, it shriveled up a like a raisin. That left it riven with cliffs called “thrust faults”, marked all over its surface. Now a new analysis, using data from Nasa missions, suggests that the Moon could …

Astronomers say they may have spotted a neutron star being swallowed by a black hole for very the first time after seeing vast gravitational waves rippling across space. The waves were spotted by the twin Ligo observatory in the US and the Virgo detector in Italy following a possible collision …

The space agency’s Hubble Space Telescope shows that it is growing about 9 percent faster than we had expected, based on the trajectory it started with shortly after the big bang, according to astronomers. While such a discrepancy was already suggested, the new measurements reduce the chance we are mistaken …

Japan’s space agency has dropped a bomb the size of a baseball onto an asteroid in an effort to understand the origin of the solar system. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was used to fire the copper explosive towards the asteroid, named 162173 Ryugu, making a crater which it could then collect …

SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule successfully docked on the International Space Station on Sunday, NASA and SpaceX confirmed during a live broadcast of the mission. “We can confirm hard capture is complete,” NASA said. The announcement was met with applause at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The docking began …