An image of Connemara National Park taken from the International Space Station has been released through NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured some fantastic images of Saturn and Mars while the planets were in opposition to Earth, meaning they were directly across from Earth in their celestial orbits.
This is a beautiful interactive website that showcases how the same stars form different constellations across the many sky cultures, from the Western Modern constellations to those of the Navajo, Norse, Hawaiian and Aztec cultures to name but a few.
A subglacial lake has been discovered on Mars. The Mars Express spacecraft discovered the 20km wide body of water 1 meter below the surface South pole using ground penetrating radar.
This is a fascinating Twitter thread detailing how the backgrounds of the original Star Wars movies were created using Matte paintings on glass to create the various scenes before CGI.
Astronomers using the Dark Energy Camera in Chile have discovered 12 previously unknown moons around Jupiter. The team have been searching for bodies at the edge of the solar system and early last year were scanning an area overlapped by Jupiter. By readjusting their instruments, the scientists were also able to scan the space around Jupiter and subsequently found around two dozen previously unknown bodies, thought to be Jovian satellites.
Images from the Cassini probe show plasme interactions between Saturn's moon Enceladus and its rings, showing that the two celestial bodies form an electric circuit. NASA researchers converted the recording of the plasma waves as they moved between Saturn and Enceladus and produced this audio file.
NASA have successfully completed testing of a nuclear fission power system called KRUSTY (Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology). The reactor uses Kilopower, technology based on using the heat produced by the nuclear fission of uranium to produce power. The prototype built by NASA, running at 800 degress celcius produces 1kW of power but can be scaled up to produce 10kW. Reactors to be built for mission to the Moon and Mars aim to produce 40kW.
Check out the difference in resolution between the two shots of Pluto!
Pluto 1994 | 2018 pic.twitter.com/00mJwy1c87
— Space Explorer Mike (@MichaelGalanin) April 22, 2018
