space telescopes
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Hubble Telescope Put Into Dreaded Safe Mode Due to Ongoing Glitch
NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope isn’t doing so well. The observatory has been suffering from a pesky glitch affecting its gyroscope, causing it to suspend its science operations for a second time in less than six months. On Friday, NASA announced that Hubble had automatically entered safe mode on Tuesday, April 23 when one of…
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Hell Yeah, We’re Getting a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory
Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena. On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognises that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently…
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NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope Is Being Dragged Down by the Sun
A diligent surveyor of the night skies, NEOWISE is sadly approaching its fiery demise as the Sun’s erratic outbursts are causing the infrared telescope to gradually fall out of its orbit before it eventually burns up in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s NEOWISE, or Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, will be rendered unusable in early 2025…
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The Hubble Telescope Just Sized Up an Earth-Sized Exoplanet
The Hubble Space Telescope last week ogled an exoplanet passing in front of a star in a triple system, revealing the nearby world’s mass. The world is named LTT 1445Ac, and it was discovered in 2022 by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The world orbits a red dwarf star (one in a set of…