List of All Articles with Tag 'space'

BENGALURU/WASHINGTON India's space agency landed a spacecraft on the moon's south pole on Wednesday, a mission that will

MUMBAI India will make its second attempt to land on the moon on Wednesday, a mission seen as

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee BENGALURU (Reuters) -India's space agency is closing in on an attempt to land a spacecraft on the

By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia's first moon mission in 47 years failed when its Luna-25 space craft spun out

Scientists are hoping to receive a message from aliens imminently, after waiting for 30 years. But the chances are slim: the message was sent to a star that does not appear to have any planets, and there will only be an hour to hear the message. It is 40 years since Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi composed a message intended to show what humans are like and how life works on Earth, and send it into the cosmos. They did so using a telescope at Stanford University and sent a message to Altair, a star 16.7 light years away that could potentially have life around it. Decades on, a team led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo will use a large Japanese telescope to try and see if anything is sending back a reply to our message. Astronomers believe that it is conceivable a reply would come around now, given the distance to the star and the time that has elapsed. They will listen for messages coming from the star on 22 August. That date was chosen because of its significance in Japan’s Tanabata star festival, which symbolically celebrates the meeting of two deities Orihime and Hikoboshi, the latter of which is represented by Altair. Narusawa is hopeful that aliens are out there somewhere and that the message could have really been sent towards alien life around the distant star. “A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” he told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.” The original message was sent on 15 August, 1983, as part of a collaboration with a Japanese weekly comic anthology. But the attempt to contact aliens never seemed entirely serious, and so any scientists involved are unlikely to be disappointed. In 2008, when the email was unearthed, Hirabayashi admitted that the pair had been drunk when they came up with the idea of sending the message, according to Gizmodo at the time. “I believe in aliens, but they are very difficult to find,” he said then. He also noted that he had received an array of messages from schoolchildren about the message, which had made sending it worth it. Read More Exact number of people needed for a Mars colony found – and it’s less than you think Strange hidden ‘structures’ hundreds of metres deep discovered on dark side of moon Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into moon in failed mission

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee BENGALURU India's space agency on Monday released images its spacecraft took of the far side

Russia’s Luna-25 crashed before reaching the Moon’s south pole, but India’s Chandrayaan-3 is due to land soon.

(Reuters) -An "abnormal situation" occurred at Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft on Saturday as it was preparing to transfer to its pre-landing

MOSCOW Russia's lunar spacecraft entered the moon's orbit on Wednesday, a major step towards the country's ambition of

PARIS The first launch of Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket has slipped into 2024 after an incomplete recent

By Tim Hepher PARIS Europe's top space official has urged wavering politicians not to abandon European leadership in

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON U.S. space startups have slashed workforces and restructured operations to survive amid an investment