Space Exploration

Ever since scientists began to grasp the staggering scale of the universe, we’ve wondered if there was other intelligent life out there. It certainly seems like there’s space. No one has come calling from another planet, or even sent a signal we can detect, though. This prompted famed physicist Enrico …

A grid of small polygons spotted by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover may have originated as cracks in drying mud more than 3 billion years ago, according to the Curiosity science team. This view of a Martian rock slab called ‘Old Soaker,’ which has a network of cracks that may have …

Out of all the billions of people who have lived on Earth, only 12 of them walked on the moon. Yesterday, on Martin Luther King Day, the last man to set foot on the moon passed away. Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan was 82 at the time of his death, but …

This image of Saturn’s seventh largest moon, Mimas, was photographed when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was approximately 115,000 miles (185,000 km) away. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft obtained this image of Mimas on Oct. 22, 2016. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute. Mimas, also known as Saturn I, is the …

Theories abound to address how our moon was formed. After we brought moon rocks back from the lunar excursions of the 60s, certain facts became clear, like the striking similarity between Earth’s chemical composition and that of the moon. Like the blind men with the elephant, we’re still at a …

Mars is many millions of miles away, but it’s not always as far away as you think. The powerful scientific instruments we’ve deployed to the Red Planet can occasionally give us a glimpse of our own humble planet from a different perspective. NASA has just released a new image that …

Hubble is nearing the end of its mission, and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been under construction for years. Now that the telescope has been built and is undergoing final testing, NASA has turned its attention to the future — namely, what the Webb Telescope is going to …

NASA is preparing for a pair of new asteroid-exploration missions, which will launch in the early 2020s. These missions are part of the Discovery Program, which seeks to investigate remnants of the early solar system in a somewhat low-cost way. Past Discovery missions include Mars Pathfinder, Stardust, and Dawn. The …

Attempts to investigate the origin of giant wedge-shaped sedimentary structures on Saturn’s moon Titan using analogues in Death Valley, California has thrown up new questions about the surface processes and intense rainfall that might have formed them. A vast alluvial fan in the XinJiang province of China. The right side …

The universe is a big place, and we know from targeted observations that there are a lot of black holes out there. These collapsed husks of dead stars have such intense gravity that nothing escapes them, not even light. That makes it tricky to actually observe them, but NASA’s Chandra …