Space Exploration

Earth and Mars are very different planets right now, but they’re both small, rocky planets in the inner solar system. However, a new study suggests Mars may also have different origins than Earth. Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology claim that analysis of Mars’ composition supports the idea that it …

Heavy rain on Mars reshaped impact craters and carved out river-like channels in the planet’s surface billions of years ago, according to a study by geologists from the Smithsonian Institution and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). An artist’s impression of the young Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser …

Scientists have been speculating about what we would find in the space between Saturn and its innermost rings, and the Cassini probe is finally putting those hypotheses to the test. A recent course correction has sent the spacecraft skimming along the clouds of Saturn, and the team has found this previously …

Cassini has entered its stately death spiral, and the images it’s beaming back from Saturn are second to none. As it starts the Grand Finale, Cassini is taking a long, intense burst of observations designed to beam back as much data from Saturn as we can possibly scrape up, including …

SpaceX unveiled plans for the massive Falcon Heavy (previously known as the Falcon 9 Heavy) in 2011 after completing several successful launches of the Falcon 9. The rocket has been inching closer to completion ever since, and now SpaceX has successfully tested the Falcon heavy’s core rocket module in a …

Jupiter’s moon Io would be a terrible place to visit, with active volcanoes and planes of sulfur-dioxide frost. Of course, that distinctive environment is also what makes it so interesting to study. A recent conjunction within the Jovian system provided astronomers with a unique opportunity to learn more about Io’s …

Buzz Aldrin wants NASA to privatize LEO and retire the ISS. At the 2017 Humans to Mars conference, according to Space.com, Aldrin remarked that “We must retire the ISS as soon as possible…We simply cannot afford $3.5 billion a year of that cost.” Aldrin’s plan for Mars is heavily dependent …

NASA’s Cassini orbiter watched bright, feathery clouds of methane moving across the northern regions of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, on May 7, 2017. This image was taken on May 7, 2017, at a distance of 316,000 miles (508,000 km). The view is an orthographic projection centered on 57 …

A new movie sequence of images from Cassini shows the view as the orbiter swooped over Saturn during the first of its ‘Grand Finale’ dives between the gas giant and its rings on April 26, 2017. As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings …

Exomoons around migrant hot Jupiters could hold onto life-giving atmospheres and maintain surface oceans for billions and billions of years. This is the conclusion of a paper from the University of Washington modeling the impact of inward migrating gas giants on their frozen moons. According Lehmer et al, moons around …