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Georgina Torbet

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She specializes in current and future exploration of Mars. She has previously written about science, technology, and security topics for websites like SlashGear, Engadget, and Futurism. She has a master's degree in neuroscience and a PhD in psychology.

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth.

NASA will try bringing the Hubble telescope back online on Friday

The Hubble Space Telescope recently suffered a glitch that made it go into safe mode. On Friday, NASA will attempt to get the telescope up and running again.
Space News
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars. This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

James Webb telescope captures a dramatic image of newborn star

A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the dramatic outflows from a young star.
Space News
NASA Orbiter Snaps Stunning Views of Mars Horizon

Mars Odyssey spacecraft pulls a sideways maneuver to capture the planet’s horizon

A new image from a NASA orbiter shows an unusual view of Mars, capturing the planet's horizon complete with clouds.
Space News
Orbital geometry of HD110067: Tracing a link between two neighbour planets at regular time intervals along their orbits, creates a pattern unique to each couple. The six planets of the HD110067 system together create a mesmerising geometric pattern due to their resonance-chain.

Astronomers spot rare star system with six planets in geometric formation

Astronomers have discovered a star system in which six planets orbit one star in an elaborate geometrical pattern due to a phenomenon called orbital resonance.
Space News
This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk in which planets are forming.

James Webb finds that rocky planets could form in extreme radiation environment

The James Webb Space Telescope investigated a disk that could be forming rocky planets, even though nearby massive stars are pumping out significant radiation.
Space News
Hubble orbiting more than 300 miles above Earth as seen from the space shuttle.

Hubble Space Telescope is in safe mode due to a gyro problem

The Hubble Space Telescope has a problem with its hardware and is currently in safe mode, with science operations paused until the fault can be corrected.
Space News
Artist’s illustration of ultra-high-energy cosmic ray astronomy to clarify extremely energetic phenomena.

Super high energy particle falls to Earth; its source is a mystery

Researchers have detected one of the highest-energy particles ever falling to Earth. And no one knows where it came from.
Space News
Artist's impression of ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) approaching Earth.

Juice spacecraft gears up for first ever Earth-moon gravity boost

The Juice mission is on its way to Jupiter, and it will be carrying out the first gravity assist around both Earth and the moon.
Space News
An artists rendering of a blue and white exoplanet known as WASP-80 b, set on a star-studded black background. Alternating horizontal layers of cloudy white, grey and blue cover the planets surface. To the right of the planet, a rendering of the chemical methane is depicted with four hydrogen atoms bonded to a central carbon atom, representing methane within the exoplanet's atmosphere. An artist’s rendering of the warm exoplanet WASP-80 b whose color may appear bluish to human eyes due to the lack of high-altitude clouds and the presence of atmospheric methane identified by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, similar to the planets Uranus and Neptune in our own solar system.

How astronomers used James Webb to detect methane in the atmosphere of an exoplanet

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently announced they had made a rare detection of methane in an exoplanet atmosphere.
Space News
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

NASA engineers testing successor to Ingenuity helicopter rotors

NASA is investigating the possibility of more helicopters for future Mars missions, and recently shared a peek at its testing of new Mars helicopter hardware.
Space News
The full view of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense centre. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A vast region of ionised hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it. Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionised hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation. Researchers note the surprising extent of the ionised region, covering about 25 light-years. A cluster of protostars – stars that are still forming and gaining mass – are producing outflows that glow like a bonfire at the base of the large infrared-dark cloud, indicating that they are emerging from the cloud’s protective cocoon and will soon join the ranks of the more mature stars around them. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the scene, appearing like holes in the starfield. Researchers say they have only begun to dig into the wealth of unprecedented high-resolution data that Webb has provided on this region, and many features bear detailed study. This includes the rose-coloured clouds on the right side of the image, which have never been seen in such detail.

Stunning James Webb image shows the beating heart of our Milky Way

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of our galaxy, in a region close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Space News
Composite X-ray, Optical, & Infrared Image of the Galactic Center.

NASA project turns images of space into music you can play

NASA has turned an image of the center of the Milky Way galaxy into an original composition to be performed by a group of musicians.
Space News
An artist's rendition of NASA's SPHEREx space mission.

Scientists disagree on how fast the universe is expanding, and new tech is making it worse

Usually new tech brings us closer to understanding more of the universe, but in the field of cosmology, one uncertainty is only getting worse.
Space Features
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached to the spacecraft.

NASA laser communications test riding with Psyche sends back its first data

An experimental test of laser communications has sent back its first data, in a demonstration of the use of laser communications for deep space missions.
Space News
Artistic concept of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its parent star. Even though the rather cool host star emits a relatively small fraction of high-energy photons, they can reach deep into the planet’s fluffy atmosphere.

James Webb investigates a super puffy exoplanet where it rains sand

One of the least dense exoplanets known was recently investigated using James Webb, and the planet's weather seems is as strange as its puffiness.
Space News
An artist’s concept of the nearby exoplanet, LTT 1445Ac, which is the size of Earth. The planet orbits a red dwarf star.

Hubble spots an Earth-sized exoplanet just 22 light-years away

The Hubble Space Telescope has recently confirmed that a nearby planet, which is diminutive by exoplanet standards, is 1.07 times the size of Earth.
Space News
Starship on the launch pad ahead of the second orbital flight test on November 11, 2023.

SpaceX Starship makes it off the pad, but is lost during second test flight

SpaceX has performed a second integrated test flight of its Starship, which survived stage separation but was lost near to the end of its engine burn.
Space News
A dwarf galaxy in the throes of transitioning to an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy as it’s stripped of its outer layers of stars and gas by a nearby larger galaxy.

Astronomers discover how tiny dwarf galaxies form ‘fossils’

When tiny dwarf galaxies age and begin to erode away, they can transform into an even smaller and more dense shape, called an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy.
Space News
The asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI).

Lucy’s asteroid surprise: ‘we never suspected anything so bizarre’

NASA's Lucy mission recently passed by a small asteroid called Dinkinesh, which turned out to be a fascinating system all of its own.
Space News
This panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416 was created by combining infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible-light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. To make the image, in general the shortest wavelengths of light were color-coded blue, the longest wavelengths red, and intermediate wavelengths green. The resulting wavelength coverage, from 0.4 to 5 microns, reveals a vivid landscape of galaxies that could be described as one of the most colorful views of the universe ever created.

Webb and Hubble work together to image the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster

A beautiful new image of a cluster of thousands of galaxies combines data from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
Space News
Astronomers found the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays (in a galaxy dubbed UHZ1) using the Chandra and Webb telescopes. X-ray emission is a telltale signature of a growing supermassive black hole. This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. This composite image shows the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 that UHZ1 is located behind, in X-rays from Chandra (purple) and infrared data from Webb (red, green, blue).

Record-breaking supermassive black hole is oldest even seen in X-rays

The supermassive black hole is 13.2 billion light-years away and could help uncover the mysteries of how the largest black holes form.
Space News
Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover reaches a milestone on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring Mars's Gale Crater, recently marked an impressive milestone: 4,000 days on Mars.
Space News
The Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, is part of the Orion constellation. About 1,375 light-years away, it is the closest giant star-forming region to Earth. With Euclid, which captured this image, scientists hope to find many dim and previously unseen Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as baby stars.

See the stunning first images taken by the dark matter-hunting Euclid telescope

The European Space Agency has released the first five full-color images taken by Euclid, a space telescope launched earlier this year to probe dark matter.
Space News
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule soars upward after lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 14, 2022, on the company’s 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:44 p.m. EDT. Dragon will deliver more than 5,800 pounds of cargo, including a variety of NASA investigations, to the space station. The spacecraft is expected to spend about a month attached to the orbiting outpost before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida.

How to watch SpaceX deliver cargo and experiments to the ISS this week

This week will see a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft blast off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and head for the ISS to deliver supplies and research.
Space News
OSIRIS-APEX pursues asteroid Apophis during its exceptionally close flyby of Earth on April 13, 2029.

NASA’s first asteroid-sampling mission continues on to a new target

NASA's OSIRIS-REx recently dropped off a sample from asteroid Bennu, and now it will continue on to a new target: asteroid Apophis.
Space News
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula in the search for answers about the supernova remnant’s origins. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have revealed new details in infrared light.

James Webb snaps an image of the famous and beautiful Crab Nebula

Located 6,500 light-years away, the Crab Nebula is famous among astronomers for its elaborate and beautiful structure.
Space News
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals an ultraviolet view of Jupiter.

Hubble captures a stunning ultraviolet image of Jupiter

A new image from Hubble shows Jupiter in a whole new way, highlighting the Great Red Spot - an enormous storm larger than the width of the entire Earth.
Space News
This image shows the “moonrise” of the satellite as it emerges from behind asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI), one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby of the asteroid binary. This image was taken at 12:55 p.m. EDT (1655 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023, within a minute of closest approach, from a range of approximately 270 miles (430 km). From this perspective, the satellite is behind the primary asteroid. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft snaps not one, but two asteroids during flyby

NASA's Lucy spacecraft made its first asteroid flyby. But when it returned the images it took, there was a surprise in store: a second, even smaller asteroid.
Space News
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli (center) assists astronauts Andreas Mogensen (left) from ESA (European Space Agency) and Loral O’Hara (right) from NASA as they try on their spacesuits and test the suits’ components aboard the International Space Station’s Quest airlock in preparation for an upcoming spacewalk.

How to watch the delayed ISS maintenance spacewalk this week

This Wednesday will see NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli head out from the ISS on a spacewalk to work on station maintenance.
Space News
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt collects a sample from the Moon in 1972

The moon may be 40 million years older than we thought

Researchers working on samples collected by Apollo 17 astronauts have performed an analysis that suggests the moon may be as much as 4.46 billion years old.
Space News
In this artist’s concept, NASA astronauts drill into the Martian subsurface. The agency has created new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts.

Map of Mars shows the location of ice beneath the planet’s surface

A NASA project called Subsurface Water Ice Mapping or SWIM has released a new set of Mars maps, showing the locations of subsurface ice on the planet.
Space News
This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument highlights GRB 230307A’s kilonova and its former home galaxy among their local environment of other galaxies and foreground stars. The neutron stars were kicked out of their home galaxy and travelled the distance of about 120,000 light-years, approximately the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, before finally merging several hundred million years later.

James Webb observes merging stars creating heavy elements

The James Webb Space Telescope has detected heavy elements being created in a star merger for the first time.
Space News
The billion-year-old aftermath of a double spiral galaxy collision, at the heart of which is a pair of supermassive black holes.

This peculiar galaxy has two supermassive black holes at its heart

A recent image taken by the Gemini South observatory shows the chaotic result of a merger between two spiral galaxies one billion years ago.
Space News
A galactic collision of two galaxies which began more than 300 million years ago, NGC 520 is actually made up of two disk galaxies which will eventually merge together to form one larger, more massive system. NGC 520 was discovered by William Herschel in 1784 and is one of the largest and brightest galaxies in the Siena Galaxy Atlas.

The Siena Galaxy Atlas now catalogs 400,000 nearby galaxies

A publicly available digital atlas of nearby galaxies was recently updated and now includes almost 400,000 galaxies located within our cosmic neighborhood.
Space News
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