Space Exploration

We used to think of Mars as a dry, desolate planet devoid of running water. Then, in 2011 astronomers discovered evidence that liquid water might still flow on the Martian surface. This gave scientists hope that life may still exist on the red planet and that humans could more easily …

Most Americans will spend Saturday in varying degrees of stupor, having just consumed a month’s worth of calories and/or spent a month’s worth of income. But not Mike Hughes. Mike, a 61-year-old limo driver has spent the past few years building a homemade, steam-powered rocket. This initial rocket — which …

Just over a month ago, scientists working on the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) observatory at Haleakala, Hawaii caught a glimpse of something truly extraordinary: the first known interstellar object to pass through the solar system. Over the past month, we’ve refined observations and detailed what we …

A great deal of time and energy is put into designing the instruments and cameras that go to Mars on rovers, but none of those will do any good if the vehicle is dead in the sand after a few weeks. After all, it’s a few million miles to the …

It turns out solid-phase haze particles help cool the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto. That’s according to new research by planetary scientists from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and elsewhere. According to Zhang et al, Pluto’s atmosphere is unique among Solar System planetary atmospheres, as its equilibrium temperature …

Progress, as they state, is sluggish. In science, this is often true even for major advancements; hardly ever is a whole field of research remade in a single swoop. The Human Genome Task took a decade. Finding the first gravitational waves took multiple years. It’s hard to overstate the huge …

If you’re getting tired of Earth with all its breathable air and gravity, there may soon be a home for you among the stars. Well, at least in spirit. Asgardia has successfully gotten a satellite into orbit, thus gaining a foothold as the first “space nation” in history. It’s more …

The Mars 2020 rover project is in full swing at NASA, and the agency has chosen to base the new rover on the phenomenally successful Curiosity design. That means the rover needs to slow down in the Martian atmosphere before engaging its rocket-based landing system. NASA has just completed the …

All robotic missions on Mars have been limited to the actual surface — rovers like Curiosity are reliable, but their range is limited. While Curiosity has driven more than 10 miles on the Martian surface, it took more than five years. A flying drone aircraft could cover much more distance, …

Our knowledge of exoplanets has expanded exponentially over the last 20 years, thanks to sophisticated search techniques and telescopes like Kepler. One of the problems with our data, however, has been that it’s much easier to find large gas giants or huge rocky worlds than it is to find Earth-like …