WASHINGTON: A ‘global’ ocean containing a vast liquid water reservoir lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s geologically active moon Enceladus, according to new research using data from Nasa’s Cassini mission. Researchers found that the magnitude of the moon’s very slight wobble, as it orbits Saturn, can only be accounted for if its outer ice shell is not frozen solid to its interior, meaning a global ocean must be present. […]

  Washington: Groundwater is disappearing fast from the world and India is among the worst hit, shows data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. Among the world’s largest groundwater basins, the Indus Basin aquifer of India and Pakistan, which is a source of fresh water for millions of people, is the second-most overstressed with no natural replenishment to offset usage, said two new studies led by the […]

  NASA’s Curiosity rover has found nitrogen on the surface of Mars, a significant discovery that adds to evidence the Red Planet could once have sustained life, the space agency said Tuesday. By drilling into Martian rocks, Curiosity found evidence of nitrates, compounds containing nitrogen that can be used by living organisms. The Curiosity team has already found evidence that other ingredients needed for life, such as liquid water and […]

Washington: Mars once had a body of water bigger than Earth`s Arctic Ocean and vast enough to cover the entire surface of the planet, NASA scientists said in a study released on Thursday The new research, providing estimates on the quantity of water on the Red Planet, is based upon detailed observations of two slightly different forms of water in Mars` atmosphere, and was published in the journal Science. The […]

Initial blast from record-setting series of explosions was as much as 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded At its peak, the flare reached temperatures of 360 million degrees Fahrenheit (200 million Celsius), more than 12 times hotter than the center of the sun ‘Superflare’ came from one of the stars in a close binary system known as DG Canum Venaticorum located about 60 light-years away. […]

New York: The most powerful solar flare ever is beginning to rotate to a position directly in line with Earth that, if it hits the ground, can send GPS and communication signals out of gear, the NASA reported. The sun is going through an 11-year cycle which at its peak is called a solar storm maximum. “These solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation that can disturb the atmosphere in […]

The sun is putting on a fireworks show again. NASA cameras captured images of what the agency is calling at least two “significant” solar flares. The first one peaked at 7:42 a.m. ET Tuesday, followed by a second, lesser blast at 8:52 a.m. ET. The short-lived explosions were expected to disrupt high-frequency radio communications on Earth, although NASA scientists said they pose no threat to humans. Even with all its […]

A rocky planet weighing 17 times as much as Earth has been found, surprising astronomers who expected it to be a big ball of gas. Scientists dubbed the planet a “mega-Earth” because it’s much larger than previously discovered rocky celestial bodies. The planet, sighted by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Kepler spacecraft, is located 560 light years from Earth and circles a Sun-like star every 45 days, The […]

Religion and astronomy may not overlap often, but a new NASA X-ray image captures a celestial object that resembles the “Hand of God.” The hand was produced when a star exploded and ejected an enormous cloud of material, which NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, glimpsed in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the photo. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory had imaged the green and red parts previously, using lower-energy […]