NASA has announced the creation of the NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System Science), coalition, an initiative dedicated to the search for life on planets outside the solar system. It puts together different disciplines because this research goes beyond just astronomy: for example, it’s of interest to planetary and climate science researchers.
When astronomers started studying a map of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR), the residue of the earliest stages of the universe, they found what was called the Cold Spot. That’s a huge area colder than expected which could be the largest single cosmic structure never identified. According to an international team of scientists consists of a cosmic supervoid which about 1.8 billion light years across.
For many years, scientists have known that complex molecules can form in space, including some important in the birth of life forms. This month, two studies have been published that prove the presence of various molecules of this type in an infant solar system and even in protostellar clouds in which Sun-like stars are formed together with their planets.
A little while ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2 from the International Space Station. The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, assisted by commander Terry Virts, managed the operation and started moving the Dragon to the docking point of the Harmony module. The spacecraft was launched last Tuesday.
In late 2010, NASA’s space probe Cassini started observing a huge storm on Saturn lasting for several months. In recent days, an article was published on the journal “Nature Geoscience” that provides an explanation for this phenomenon that had been observed a number of times in the last 140 years but had remained mysterious. According to a team led by Cheng Li of CalTech, Pasadena, the presence of water is the key to its origin.
