NASA says this planet is just too damn hot to exist Oh, the Hot TESS! Orbiting close to itssun, in a region known as a Neptune desert, a year on LTT 9779 b lasts less than 24 hours. But, that is just one of the extreme conditions in this bizarre world. “This planet doesn’t have a solid surface, and it’s much hotter even than Mercury in our solar system — not only would lead melt in the atmosphere of this planet, but so would platinum, chromium, and stainless steel,” Crossfield said....

The team runningNASA’sKepler observatoryand the the Kepler planet-finding telescope have found the largest collection of planets yet orbiting a single star. The star, named Kepler-11 is nearly identical to our own Sun. It hosts at least these 6 planets that are all in tighter orbits than Mercury. The photo above is an artist rendering provided by NASA of one of the smallest planets that Kepler has found – a rocky planet called Kepler-10b – that measures 1....

NASA spotted a snake-like exoplanet that shed and regrew its own atmosphere I love the smell of methane in the morning… This inhospitable world orbits its parent star, a red dwarf, once every 38 hours, at a distance roughly 70 times closer than the space between the Earth and Sun. The atmosphere seen on GJ 1132 b today is a noxious blend of hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide,methane, and an aerosol haze similar to smog here on Earth....

The James Webb space telescope was successfully launched over the weekend. The $10Bhoneycombarray, which will serve as the spiritual successor to Hubble, is now on its way to Lagrange point two. There, it’ll sit in orbit a million miles away from the planet it was built on. ✅ Milestone achieved.@NASAWebbis safely in space, powered on, and communicating with ground controllers. The space telescope is now on its way to#UnfoldTheUniverseat its final destination one million miles (1....

It’s been 66 million long years since an asteroid erased the dinosaurs — and astronomers are getting antsy. In the last few months, they’ve warned that space rocks as big asthe Eiffel Tower,the Empire State Building, andthe Great Pyramid of Gizacould all miss Earth byjust millionsof miles. In response, NASA is resorting to increasingly desperate measures. Aftersimulating catastrophe impactsandslapping asteroids with spaceships, the agency on Monday unveiled its most outlandish weapon yet: analgorithm....