Space Exploration

We didn’t get pasted by that asteroid that sailed through Wednesday, which is arguably a good thing. Discovered in 2014, it was due to pass by Earth at a close but safe distance, which it won’t do again for another 500 years. Scientists all over the world took the opportunity …

With every new exoplanet discovery, we seem to get that much closer to finding evidence of extraterrestrial life. A new exoplanet identified in orbit of a nearby star could be the best place to look yet. Astronomers have confirmed a star 39 light-years away plays host to a planet that …

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured these images of Atlas, an inner satellite of Saturn, during a close flyby on April 12, 2017. These are the closest images ever taken of the flying saucer-shaped body — the spacecraft flew by about 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from Atlas to capture its appearance. This …

Life as we know it requires liquid water, and until recently that seemed to be in short supply outside of Earth. However, recent studies of Mars and several moons have pointed to the presence of water. In fact, some moons may contain subsurface oceans with a larger total volume of …

Recent observations of Europa by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a plume of material erupting from the moon’s surface at precisely the same location as a similar apparent plume seen in 2014. The Hubble images bolster evidence that the plumes are a real phenomenon, flaring up intermittently in …

Crystallization of Moon’s liquid metallic core may have driven its now-lost magnetic field approximately 3 billion years ago, according to new research published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Ancient Moon generated a dynamo magnetic field in its liquid metallic core; this dynamo may have been driven by …

Jupiter is intensely studied because it’s the closest of our solar system’s gas giants, and it also happens to be the largest. Then there’s that entourage of moons, which are fascinating in their own right. Despite all the attention Jupiter has gotten over the years, it’s still finding ways to …

During NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s deepest-ever dive through Enceladus’ plume of gas and ice grains, researchers discovered molecular hydrogen in the material spewing from the icy moon. This discovery provides further evidence for hydrothermal activity in the ocean beneath Enceladus’ surface and heightens the possibility that the ocean could have conditions …

The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have garnered more attention over the years because they’re closer, and let’s face it, they look cool. Uranus is easy to overlook out there in the outer solar system, but there are some newly released images from NASA and the ESA that might make …

The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex is a group of nebulae and stellar nurseries positioned some 1,500 light years away from Earth. This is a place where new stars are born, but also apparently where they meet an early end. New observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile …