The Neil Gehrels’ Swift Observatory is plummeting toward Earth, and NASA is spending $30 million to try to stop it.
orbits & rotations
Posted inNews
Oddball Moon Might Be a Neptune Original After All
Infrared observations of Nereid hint that it might have formed in orbit around Neptune, unlike most of the planet’s other satellites.
Posted inNews
Titanic Shake-Up Could Explain Saturn’s Young Rings and Strange Moons
A new model shows how the migration of Titan could have destroyed another moon, creating Saturn’s rings and the moon Hyperion. And, the model suggests, this all happened in the past billion years.
Posted inNews
Rare Hot Jupiters Could Reveal How All Giant Planets Form
A new analysis shows that the way massive planets migrate after their formation helps determine whether they have companion planets. The process hints at planetary formation in general.
Posted inNews
A “Lava World” Unexpectedly Hosts an Atmosphere
TOI-561 b, an exoplanet roughly 275 light-years away, seems to have a thick atmosphere despite being wildly irradiated by its host star.
Posted inNews
What Tumbling Asteroids Tell Us About Their Innards
Data from the Gaia space observatory reveal that many slowly spinning asteroids rotate chaotically. A new theory links that chaos to their inner structure and history.
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Hayabusa2’s Final Target is 3 Times Smaller Than We Thought
It also spins twice as fast as previous estimates suggested. A spacecraft touchdown will be challenging, but not impossible.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Core Movements Could Be Causing Tiny Shifts in Earth’s Spin Speed
Researchers use ancient eclipse data and new machine learning techniques to understand what processes changed the length of Earth’s days over the past 3,000 years.
Posted inNews
The Relatively Messy Problem with Lunar Clocks
Using Einstein’s theory of general relativity, physicists found that clocks on the Moon would run 56 microseconds faster than clocks on Earth. That finding will help future lunar missions navigate.
Posted inNews
Centennial-Scale Jumps in CO2 Driven by Earth’s Tilt
Antarctic ice records uncovered seven previously unknown jumps in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These events may have been driven by changes in Earth’s tilt.