Scientists sniff for hazards during drilling rig spills

Scientists sniff for hazards during drilling rig spills

Within weeks of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were taking air samples near the spill via one of the agency’s Hurricane Hunter aircraft (pictured). At a time when official estimates said the spill was about 5,000 barrels a day, the group’s measurements suggested that number was many times higher, as it proved to be.  Read more

New dawn for Aquarius

New dawn for Aquarius

Last July, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it was cutting all funding for the Aquarius, the world’s only operating seafloor laboratory, supporters rallied around the facility literally and figuratively to draw attention to its plight. Thanks to these efforts, Aquarius is going to avoid being pulled out of the water. “Things are getting better every day,” says Tom Potts, the facility’s director.  Read more

NuSTAR spies black holes in galactic web

NuSTAR spies black holes in galactic web

In a new and sharper hunt for the Universe’s most violent events, astronomers may have found two medium-sized galactic monsters. Launched in June, NASA’S NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Array) X-ray observatory has discovered what may be two intermediate mass black holes in a nearby galaxy — a missing link between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes. Principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena unveiled the mission’s first science on 7 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California.  Read more

NASA announces Mars science rover in 2020

NASA announces Mars science rover in 2020

Remember all the complaints about the end of NASA’s Mars programme? Mars scientists can turn their frowns upside down. NASA says that it will be sending another science rover to the surface of Mars in 2020, using the same chassis and landing system as was used for the Curiosity mission (pictured). Though the science payload is not yet decided, scientists are already hoping that it will be a caching rover — a mission to gather rocks that subsequently would be brought back to Earth for intensive study.  Read more

Did the Solar System start with an extra planet?

Did the Solar System start with an extra planet?

The Solar System may have formed with an extra planet that ultimately got the boot. The sacrificed planet, the size of Uranus or Neptune, could have served to stabilize the rest of the Solar System, including Earth and the other terrestrial planets.  Read more

Could a moon of Uranus harbour an underground ocean?

Could a moon of Uranus harbour an underground ocean?

Since 2005, astrobiologists have considered Enceladus a possible haven for life, after the Cassini mission found that the icy moon of Saturn shoots out plumes of water through fissures in its crust. But planetary scientists Elizabeth Turtle of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and Julie Castillo-Rogez of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are now turning their eyes to an even more distant Solar System locale: Ariel, a moon of Uranus that they think could also harbour an underground ocean.  Read more

Mars rover set to feed sand into its instrumental maw

Mars rover set to feed sand into its instrumental maw

Curiosity, NASA’s Mars rover, has found a sandbox to play in. In a news briefing on Thursday from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, mission managers said that the rover has arrived at a soft pad of loose sand, dubbed Rocknest (pictured). They expect to stay there for a few weeks and feed small doses of the sand into its analytical instruments.  “We’re going to stay here for a little while,” says Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins.  Read more