Science And Space

  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Space Force general selected for Golden Dome program U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a plan for his ambitious "Golden Dome" missile defense shield this week, stating it will cost $175 billion and take about three years to develop - but some experts say the price tag could be many times higher. Read More

  (NASA) Trump admin cancels lease for NASA's NYC Goddard Institute for Space Studies Lab It would appear that the latest wave of U.S. federal program cuts fueled by the Trump administration has affected NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) lab in New York City, a branch of the agency dedicated to studying climate change and other Earth sciences. On Friday (April 25), news outlets such as CNN and SpaceNews reported that GISS's lease on office space in a Columbia University building in Manhattan's Upper West Side is set to be canceled. According to SpaceNews, an April 24 email sent to Goddard employees and signed by Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland (the parent organization of GISS), stated that the lease will end on May 31. The news outlet says the lease, which costs the agency $3.03 million annually, was originally supposed to last through August 2031. Read More

  (NASA) Hubble Space Telescope is in 'excellent technical condition' on its 35th birthday The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 35th anniversary in space today, but even as a senior citizen in the spacecraft population, it is showing no sign of slowing down. Launched in 1990 by NASA and operated jointly with the European Space Agency, the Hubble Space Telescope was a dream brought to reality. All of a sudden, scientists could harness a large, multi-purpose observatory operating in orbit, beyond the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere. Now a household name, Hubble has had a hand in many of the most crucial astronomical discoveries of the past four decades. Read More

  (NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted) Possible signs of alien life found on nearby exoplanet Scientists have found further evidence of possible biosignature gases on the planet K2-18b, strengthening its case as an abode for alien life. But the case is far from closed. Read More

  (NASA) NASA astronaut Don Pettit will return to Earth on April 19 NASA astronaut Don Pettit and two cosmonaut colleagues will return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday night (April 19), if all goes to plan. The journey home for Pettit, Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner will begin Saturday at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT), when their Russian Soyuz spacecraft undocks from the ISS' Rassvet module. The trio will touch down on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, just a few hours later, around 9:20 p.m. EDT (0120 GMT and 6:20 a.m. local Kazakh time on April 20). NASA will webcast the homecoming live, and Space.com will carry the agency's feed if it's made available. Read More

  (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford)) Extreme magnetic fields preventing stars from being born Stars are the architects of nearly all the chemical elements in the universe, including ones crucial to life as we know it, such as carbon and oxygen. Yet, despite decades of research, aspects of star formation are as mysterious as the dense, dark clouds of gas in which baby stars are embedded. The James Webb Space Telescope's observations of Sagittarius C (Sgr C), a star-forming region at the Milky Way's heart that appears to form fewer stars than expected, are shedding new light on some of these enigmatic processes. Read More