News

A new decadal survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends NASA fully support NEO Surveyor, a space-based survey designed to discover and measure asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. Amy Mainzer, a professor of planetary sciences, leads the effort. 

The extended UArizona-led mission, dubbed OSIRIS-APEX, will study the near-Earth asteroid Apophis, which is expected to have a close encounter with Earth in 2029.

A team of astronomers including researchers from the University of Arizona has discovered evidence of a giant planet in the process of forming. This provides the first-ever look at the earliest stages of the formation of a gas giant planet, when it's still embedded in the disk of gas and dust surrounding its young host star.

Most of the rocky bodies in our solar system were formed or shaped by massive collisions early in the solar system's history. A newly observed dust cloud from a similar crash offers clues about how often these events occur around other stars.

After months of alignment and fine-tuning, the James Webb Space Telescope has produced its first clear image of a star, thanks to the Near Infrared Camera developed and managed by UArizona. NASA is confident that the telescope's optics can achieve the mission's science goals.

Plasma is rare on Earth, but it fills the sky. To more deeply understand this state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible universe, NASA's HelioSwarm mission will deploy a "swarm" of spacecraft to gather data. UArizona assistant professor Kristopher Klein will serve as the mission's deputy principal investigator.

For weeks, UArizona students have been gathering data on a high-profile piece of space junk on a collision course with the moon. They've confirmed it's not a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster as previously believed.

Engineering photos captured by UArizona's Near-Infrared Camera mark an important milestone for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. They confirm that the telescope is functioning and mirror alignment can begin. The public can expect to see the first scientific images from Webb in the summer.

UArizona astronomers use DESI, which has observed more galaxies than any previous 3-D survey, to hunt for intermediate-mass black holes in small galaxies. 

Moons around terrestrial planets may play important roles in shaping the conditions for life. For sizable moons to form successfully, the circumstances must be just right, a new study finds.