The Open University

China goes where no one has gone before – the moon’s far side

3 January 2019

Professor David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at The Open University discusses China’s recent successful mission to land its robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon – the first ever such attempt and landing. In a spectacular few days for solar system exploration – during which NASA whizzed the New Horizons spacecraft past the Kuiper Belt […]

From volcanoes on Mars to scarps on Mercury – how places on other worlds get their names

2 January 2019

The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, successfully completed a flyby of “Ultima Thule”, an object in the Kuiper belt of bodies beyond Neptune on January 1, 2019. The name Ultima Thule, signifying a distant unknown place, is fitting but it is currently just a nickname pending formal naming. The official names […]

Do you hit snooze? OU academic uncovers our sleep patterns

3 December 2018

There’s more to a good night’s sleep than we might think, suggests Dr Paul Kelley, who has created a public research project to open our eyes to our chronotype – our natural sleep pattern. If you’re prone to sleeping on the job, it could be you’re going against your chronotype. Changing your work/study hours might […]

OU plays role in making space research a public affair

20 November 2018

The Open University and European partner institutions are creating a way to open up science research to all to get involved. This will include citizen science projects among other initiatives. The European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures (ESCAPE) will launch its first phase in early 2019, as part of the […]

OU scientists among international team to find new planet

14 November 2018

Scientists from The Open University are among an international team which has discovered a new planet orbiting the closest single star to the Sun. The discovery features in a paper due to be published on Thursday 15th November in Nature, co-authored by three OU astronomers: Professor Carole Haswell, Post-Doctoral Researcher Dr John Barnes and former […]

Hyperspectral images taken by Teledyne e2v CCD55-20 sensor.

OU renews partnership for space detector technologies

29 October 2018

A new five-year partnership has been agreed between The Open University (OU)’s Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI) and innovative technology company Teledyne e2v. Together the collaboration will advance imaging detector technology for space science and earth observations. Specifically the partnership will continue to develop “space hardened” CCD and CMOS detector technologies from x-ray, ultraviolet, to […]

Some like it hot – OU scientist explains the mission to Mercury

19 October 2018

The BepiColombo spacecraft blasted off into space, bound for Mercury in the early hours of Saturday 20th October from French Guyana and travel 9 billion km to reach Mercury in 2025. The hope is that its findings will help uncover the mysteries of the least explored planet in the inner Solar System and the closest […]

Europe’s set to blast off to Mercury – here’s the rocket science

19 October 2018

The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its BepiColombo mission to the planet Mercury from its spaceport near the equator in Kourou, French Guyana, on October 20. My involvement in the mission means that I will be anxiously following the journey as the spacecraft carries out a series of tricky manoeuvres, culminating in its final […]

Mount Etna: volcano is sliding towards the sea and now we know why

11 October 2018

The southeast flank of Mount Etna in Sicily is sliding towards the sea at a rate of several centimetres a year. This might not sound like much, but the kind of stress that this movement creates inside volcanoes can cause devastating landslides. If, one day, Etna’s movement significantly increases then it could have serious consequences. […]

Exomoons: astronomers report first ever discovery

8 October 2018

In Star Wars VI we first meet the Ewoks living on the Forest Moon of Endor. The planet Endor itself is a gas giant, but the Forest Moon is a habitable world, peopled by small furry sentient creatures. While we may not be living in the Star Wars universe, astronomers have now found the first […]

OU News

Category: Science, maths, computing and technology