WELCOME

Issue 116

HEROES OF SPACE

The first American to board Mir, Thagard paved the way for the Shuttle-Mir program

News from around the universe

22 March 2021 Frosty Martian sand dunes ©

A supermassive black hole is speeding through space, and astronomers don’t know why

The black hole could be influenced by an

THE TRUTH ABOUT ROSWELL FILES

Did a flying saucer really crash land in America in 1947, only to be hushed up by the government?

IS THE TRUTH REALLY OUT THERE?

Former CIA operative Ben Smith investigated the crash which took place in Roswell in 1947 for a television documentary aired on the History Channel, or Sky History in the UK, called Roswell:The FirstWitness . He spoke to the grandchildren of Major Jesse Marcel, the person sent to the crash site to gather debris for analysis. He also visited the site with aviation crash experts, studied a journal found among Marcel's possessions for clues and spoke to other witnesses. Was Marcel right? Was the evidence gathered that day really not of this Earth?

INSTANT LANDING PAD

Touching down on a new planet can be unsettling, but Masten Space Systems aims to put things on a firmer footing

SIGNALS FROM SATURN

An unusual signal from the ringed planet’s moon Rhea now has a possible explanation

SEEKING THE ORIGINS OF LIFE

A planetary scientist with a very steady hand, Queenie Chan speaks to All About Space about her work on tiny specks of asteroid samples collected by the Hayabusa mission

PERSEVERANCE ON MARS

NASA’s LATEST MARTIAN ROVER HAS BEGUN ITS EPIC QUEST TO FIND EVIDENCE FOR PAST LIFE RESIDING IN JEZERO CRATER

CAN WE DETECT WORMHOLES?

They’re a staple of science fiction, but could they be real? New research suggests wormholes could be somewhere around us, and we could uncover them

RARE SUPERNOVA RELIC FOUND IN OUR GALAXY

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered the remains of something quite unusual within the Milky Way’s heart

CHINA’S MODULAR SPACE STATION

A SYMBOL OF CHINA’S TECHNOLOGICAL PROWESS AND THE VALUE OF GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC CORROBORATION

SCORCHING-HOT PLANET CANDIDATE SPOTTED AROUND FAMOUS STAR

After scanning ten years of data, a possible world may be orbiting the dazzling main sequence star Vega in the constellation of Lyra

WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, THE MILKY WAY AND THE UNIVERSE BEYOND ARE FILLED WITH WONDROUS SIGHTS AND INCREDIBLE OBJECTS. TAKE A JOURNEY THROUGH THEM WITH ALL ABOUT SPACE

Eta Carinae

This star has refused to die, but astronomers are sure it’s going to blow up soon

IS THERE A PLANET NINE?

Mike Brown is the man who killed Pluto, but have the tables turned to leave his own theory of a ninth world in doubt?

Will the Moon ever leave us?

SOLAR SYSTEM

What’s in the sky?

In this issue… 78 What’s in the sky?

THIS MONTH’S PLANETS

Heading into summer affords observers the opportunity to catch the fleeting planet Mercury

APOLLO 16 LANDING SITE

Track down the landing site of the penultimate Apollo mission in the rugged lunar highlands

NAKED EYE & BINOCULAR TARGETS

Find the brightest stars of Boötes and Virgo and explore the sky around them

THE VAIN QUEEN’S DEEP-SKY DELIGHTS

How to track down some of Cassiopeia’s most sneakily concealed crown jewels

THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE

Spring lets us gaze out of our galaxy’s plane, revealing new targets

Astroshots of the month

Get featured in All About Space by sending your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com

CELESTRON STARSENSE EXPLORER DX 102AZ

This telescope’s innovative technology provides the simplest and quickest solution yet to finding objects to observe