Space Exploration

Earth is the only planet we know of right now that supports life, but considering the scale of the universe it seems like there could be others. The first step in finding these Earth-like worlds is to detect planets orbiting nearby stars. That’s what NASA’s Kepler space telescope has been …

Today, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission — sent to Mars to explore its upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the Sun and solar wind — celebrates 1,000 Earth days in orbit around the Red Planet. This artist’s concept shows MAVEN in orbit around Mars, with a fanciful …

On June 9, 2017, NASA’s Cassini orbiter captured an image of methane clouds drifting in the summer skies of Saturn’s moon Titan. Titan’s summer skies. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute. Compared to earlier in Cassini’s mission, most of the surface in Titan’s northern high latitudes is …

Solar eclipses happen every so often, but the one taking place on August 21st will be a first-of-its-kind event. That’s not because of the eclipse itself, but because of what the people in its path are doing. Google has partnered with the University of California Berkeley to collect an unprecedented …

An article entitled ‘Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species’ presents the vision of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, for future manned trips to Mars and other planets in the Solar System and specifically what will be needed to create a self-sustaining Martian city. Artist’s concept of humans working on Mars. Image …

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun, but closer to home scientists are trying to develop fusion reactors that could provide immense amounts of energy. These reactors are big and (currently) inefficient, but a NASA-funded startup called Princeton Satellite Systems is working on a small-scale fusion reactor that …

A new image of Saturn’s yin-yang moon, Iapetus, was recently captured by NASA’s Cassini probe, currently in its ‘Grand Finale’ phase. This image of Iapetus was taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on March 11, 2017. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute. Iapetus, also known as Saturn VIII, …

The gas giant Jupiter is not only the most massive planet in our Solar System, but it’s also the oldest, according to an international team of planetary researchers from the Institut für Planetologie at the University of Münster in Germany and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the United States. …

NASA is aiming to have humans on Mars in the next few decades, even if that comes with more risk than we originally thought. Just getting there is only the first challenge. Humans have to be able to survive and explore the red planet, and the agency just unveiled a …

Elon Musk wants to send humans to Mars by 2024, a proposition that seemed quite optimistic when it was announced last year. New research from the University of Nevada Las Vegas makes Musk’s goal that much less attainable. A new predictive model of radiation effects indicates we could be vastly …