MYSTERIES BEYOND EARTH

  Australian company joins global effort to recycle dangerous space debris An Australian company is part of an international effort to recycle dangerous space junk into rocket fuel – in space. The orbit our planet depends on is getting clogged with debris from old spacecraft. Dead satellites and spent rocket parts are whizzing around at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres an hour, posing a threat to communications satellites and the International  Space  Station. At those speeds, even a small screw or a  fleck of paint  poses a risk to facilities such as the ISS, as well as the humans in them. ‘A wild west out there’: Russian satellite debris worsens space junk problem Read more Last weekend, Russia fired a missile and  destroyed one of its own satellites , sending debris flying. The United States said that debris now “threatens the interests of all nations”. The worst-case scenario is cascading collisions between smaller and smaller bits of space junk until ...

Update for 6:20 am ET:  The Beaver Moon partial lunar eclipse has ended. Our  wrap story with videos is here . You can check out  amazing photos of the Beaver Moon lunar eclipse in our gallery . You can watch an ultra-long lunar eclipse online in the wee hours of Friday (Nov. 19) from one of several websites. The so-called  Beaver Moon lunar eclipse  will start at  1:02 a.m. EST (0602 GMT) , and the moon will be 97% covered by Earth's shadow at its peak. The eclipse will end at  6:03 a.m. EST (1203 GMT) . While the event will be visible from North and South America, Australia, and parts of Europe and Asia, you can also catch it online if you are clouded out. If you do have good weather, our guide on  how to photograph a lunar eclipse , as well as  how to photograph the moon  with a camera in general, can help you make the most of the event. If you need imaging gear, check out our  best cameras for astrophotography  and  be...

  Sierra Space, the subsidiary of private aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, raised $1.4 billion in new capital. The company’s valuation jumped to $4.5 billion following the raise, with investors including General Atlantic, Coatue, and Moore Strategic Ventures, as well as the funds of private equity firms BlackRock and AE Industrial Partners. Sierra Space has two major projects in development: The Dream Chaser spaceplane and the Orbital Reef space station, the latter which it partnered with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build. Sierra Space, the subsidiary of private aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, raised $1.4 billion as the company expands its portfolio of space transportation products. The company’s valuation jumped to $4.5 billion following the raise, with investors including General Atlantic, Coatue, and Moore Strategic Ventures, as well as the private equity funds of BlackRock and AE Industrial Partners. Sierra Space has two major projects in developme...

  The new TOLIMAN space telescope could launch in the mid-2020s. A new space telescope mission unveiled today (Nov. 16) will look for habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system, our sun's closest stellar neighbors.  The new mission, called TOLIMAN after an ancient Arabic-derived name for  Alpha Centauri , will carry a novel telescope fitted with a so-called diffractive pupil lens that spreads starlight into a flowerlike pattern. This unique lens will make it easier for astronomers using the scope to detect tiny irregularities in a stars' movements that are usually caused by the gravitational influence of orbiting planets, according to  a statement  by Breakthrough Initiatives, which is backing the mission. "Even for the very nearest bright stars in the night sky, finding planets is a huge technological challenge," Eduardo Bendek, an optical engineer at NASA's  Jet Propulsion Laboratory , a collaborator on the mission, said in the statement.  "Our T...

  The iconic Hubble Space Telescope has developed a glitch yet again and has entered 'safe mode' suspending scientific operation. The iconic but ageing piece of technology has needed constant repairs in recent years underlining need for new eye in the sky. Hubble's safe mode allows the telescope to remain powered using its solar panels as scientists figure out ways to address the issue.  The Hubble operations team is continuing work to resolve the issue that caused Hubble’s science instruments to enter safe mode Oct. 25. They are analyzing existing data and collecting additional data to further isolate and address the issue," NASA tweeted on Tuesday. Hubble has been facing trouble since October 23 due to synchronisation errors. NASA says that synchronisation messages are necessary to provide “information the instruments use to correctly respond to data requests and commands.”Scientists were able to rectify the problem after October 23 glitch by resetting the instrument...

  As the search for extraterrestrial life heats up, scientists may need to step up their reporting game a bit. Researchers should report evidence for  alien life  on a scale similar to the technological readiness level scale commonly used to assess the readiness of spaceflight components, a new paper argues. The goal is to make the search for life less "binary" — life or no life — and to express it more accurately in terms of agreed-upon scientific uncertainty. The newly proposed alien-life evidence scale was outlined in a study published online Oct. 27 in the journal  Nature  that was led by NASA chief scientist Jim Green. The scale includes seven levels, which are subject to change depending on the type of environment involved and how the scientific community responds.  For a  Mars  mission, for example, finding hints of a signature of life would register at Level 1 on the scale, and showing that the discovery was not due to contamination by Ear...