Today in Space

Planet found with double suns (just like in Star Wars)

Awesome, further proof George Lucas knows more than he's letting on... because Saturn's Moon Iaepetus is the deathstar. First the Iaepetus/Deathstar photo, then on with Kepler-16b.

(go read about Iapetus over at Enterprise Mission)

Star Wars fans will appreciate this bit of news from NASA: The double sunset observed by Luke Skywalker on the fictional planet Tatooine is a reality on a planet about 200 light years away from Earth.

The planet, called Kepler-16b, is cold and gaseous — in other words, Luke isn’t there. But it orbits two stars, making it the first circumbinary planet ever officially confirmed by astronomers.

Read more about this Star Wars-like planet HERE

Senate saves the James Webb Space Telescope

Yay! I can't wait till this thing gets finished and launched, it's going to give us lots of awesome stuff!

The 2012 fiscal year appropriation bill, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope and support up to a launch in 2018! Yes, it looks like this bird is going to fly.

Read more about it HERE

Soyuz lands safely in Kazakhstan, rattles nerves

Hopefully this gives some confidence back to the use of the Russian equipment.

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three returning astronauts from the International Space Station touched down safely Friday in the central steppes of Kazakhstan, but not without rattling nerves after a breakdown in communications.

Read more about it HERE

How single stars lost their companions

Not all stars are loners. In our home galaxy, the Milky Way, about half of all stars have a companion and travel through space in a binary system. But explaining why some stars are in double or even triple systems while others are single has been something of a mystery. Now a team of astronomers from Bonn University and the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio astronomy (also in Bonn) think they have the answer – different stellar birth environments decide whether a star holds on to its companion. The scientists publish their results in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Read more about it HERE

NASA Mars research helps find buried water on Earth

A NASA-led team has used radar sounding technology developed to explore the subsurface of Mars to create high-resolution maps of freshwater aquifers buried deep beneath an Earth desert, in the first use of airborne sounding radar for aquifer mapping.

Read more about it HERE

Today in Space

Exotic galaxy reveals tantalizing tale

A galaxy with a combination of characteristics never seen before is giving astronomers a tantalizing peek at processes they believe played key roles in the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies early in the history of the Universe.

Read about it HERE

A planet made of diamond

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what University of Manchester astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way.

Read about it HERE

'Instant cosmic classic' supernova discovered

A supernova discovered yesterday is closer to Earth—approximately 21 million light-years away—than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.

Read about it HERE

Report: NASA made proper pick for retired shuttles

NASA acted properly when it picked new homes for the retired space shuttles, the space agency's watchdog said Thursday.

Read about it HERE

Russia's Soyuz: historic symbol of space reliability

Russia's Soyuz rocket, which failed to put a Russian supply ship into orbit, is descended from launch vehicles of the early days of the space race but until now has been a byword for reliability.

Read about it HERE

Sunspot breakthrough

Imagine forecasting a hurricane in Miami weeks before the storm was even a swirl of clouds off the coast of Africa—or predicting a tornado in Kansas from the flutter of a butterfly's wing in Texas. These are the kind of forecasts meteorologists can only dream about.

Read about it HERE

40 year old Mariner 5 solar wind problem finds answer - turbulence doesn't go with the flow

Research led by astrophysicists at the University of Warwick has resolved a 40 year old problem with observations of turbulence in the solar wind first made by the probe Mariner Five. The research resolves an issue with what is by far the largest and most interesting natural turbulence lab accessible to researchers today.

Read about it HERE