Between April 28 and 29, 2015 a solar flare produced a filament that spread to a really huge distance. The result is that the images of the space probe SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that captured the filament, to include it cover a wide area of 45 million kilometers (about 30 million miles).
An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research carried out using NASA’s space telescope NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) to examine the central area of the Milky Way. A mysterious glow shows an amount of X-rays higher than expected and could be caused by emissions from zombies stars.
NASA has confirmed that a few hours ago the Messenger (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) space probe ended its mission by crashing on the surface of the planet Mercury. Messenger ran out of fuel and some maneuvers were recently programmed to prolong its life of a few more days. Eventually, even the helium normally used to pressurize the propellant was released in a jet that gave the probe one last push. It was a very successful mission that allowed us to discover many things about Mercury.
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has officially given up hope of taking control of the Progress M-27M spacecraft. The attempts to contact it made on Tuesday and Wednesday had no success. Yesterday the docking to the ISS was called off and then the cargo spacecraft has been declared lost. The consequence is that it will fall into the atmosphere with no control disintegrating with all supplies it’s carrying.
An article published in “Astrophysical Journal” describes the diskovery made by a group of astronomers led by Sayan Chakraborti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). They studied a supernova called 2012ap (SN 2012ap) which is a missing link between ordinary ones and the ones that cause the emission of a gamma-ray burst.