There’s a lot of debris in our solar system, and every so often we get to see it — meteors streaking against a starry sky, a bright comet or a passing asteroid. And sometimes, Earth temporarily grabs hold of one of these asteroids and keeps it around a little bit longer. That’s what’s happening later this … Read more
If you don’t look up at the moon very often, tonight’s the night you should. It’s a lunar trifecta of sorts, and it’s all the rage. This month’s full moon is being called a “super blue moon.” Don’t know what that is? Read on. What is a supermoon? The moon completes one orbit of Earth … Read more
The moon may be our constant companion, but there’s still a lot we have yet to understand about it. For example, it was only during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s that we discovered it has an atmosphere, tenuous as it is. “People do not even know that the moon has an atmosphere,” said Nicole … Read more
Oxygen is being produced on the ocean floor — seemingly by ancient lumps of metal — according to a new study. That discovery is putting the scientists behind it at odds with the Canada-based mining company that funded them. “We were the worst critics of this paper for a long time,” Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish … Read more
Retired major-general William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic Earthrise photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90. His son, retired air force … Read more
Hot on the heels of the successful crewed launch of Boeing’s new CST-100 Starliner on Wednesday, we have another rocket launch: This time it’s SpaceX’s massive Starship. This is the fourth test flight of the rocket — which will be uncrewed — that SpaceX founder Elon Musk hopes will one day take astronauts to Mars. The 120-minute … Read more
Scientists have taken a clue from a carnival stunt known as the Wall of Death to help future astronauts on the moon stay healthy. But instead of riding motorcycles, moon colonists will simply run around the walls. For decades, carnival goers have been thrilled at the spectacle of stunt drivers taking motorcycles and even cars up … Read more
China on Friday launched a lunar probe to land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. It is the latest advance in China’s increasingly sophisticated space exploration program, which is now competing with the U.S., still … Read more
With the discovery of more than 5,600 planets orbiting other stars and images from robots we have sent to all the planets in our solar system, it is becoming abundantly clear that Earth is unique among worlds. Almost all of the exoplanets scientists have discovered since the 1990s fall into four main types: gas giants like Jupiter … Read more
Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, was expected to go dark on Wednesday, six days after an off-kilter touchdown that hindered its communications and solar-charging capability, NASA and the company that flew the vehicle said. Despite persistent difficulties in communicating with the lander and keeping it charged, … Read more
