Space Exploration

Planetary researchers using data from NASA’s New Horizons mission have found evidence of snow and ice features on the dwarf planet Pluto that, until now, had only been seen on Earth. The findings appear this week in the journal Nature. In this extended color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s …

The International Space Station is getting on in years, and at some point in the next decade we’re going to learn the date of its shutdown. But what comes next? A new company called Axiom Space has a plan to launch a commercial space station in the next few years, which …

SpaceX has been grounded ever since a launchpad explosion on September 1st resulted in the loss of a Falcon 9 rocket. The failure destroyed a Facebook internet satellite and called into question the design of SpaceX’s fuel tanks. This was the second tank failure leading to the loss of a …

Images from NASA’s Dawn probe have revealed a dark, cratered world whose brightest area is made of reflective salts — not water ice. But several new studies show distinct lines of evidence for ice at or near Ceres’ surface. This false-color image shows the dwarf planet Ceres. Image credit: NASA / …

A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets provides new evidence for a warm early Mars that hosted water across a geologically long timescale, rather than in short episodic bursts. This false-color map, produced by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), depicts the topography of the Martian surface. …

This image from NASA’s Cassini robotic orbiter is one of the highest-resolution views ever taken of Pandora, Saturn’s F ring shepherd moon. This is one of Cassini’s closest views to date of Pandora, a small, inner moon of Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute. Pandora, also …

Researchers from the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or DLR) have produced a dramatic 3D animation that simulates a flight over Occator, one of the largest craters on the dwarf planet Ceres. Occator crater is a real eye-catcher: with a …

Ceres presented mysteries before the NASA Dawn spacecraft even reached it. Long range images of Ceres taken by the probe revealed unexpected points of light on the surface. There was speculation this could be ice, but now the consensus is leaning toward salt. That doesn’t mean Ceres is lacking in …

As NASA’s Juno probe makes its closest flyby of the gas giant, new research from France’s space agency could help make more sense of the data it sends back. Their paper is the latest in a global effort to refine our planetary models to ensure Juno’s measurements of the planet’s …

Curiosity has been on Mars for more than four years now, much longer than the primary mission of about 23 months. NASA builds ’em to last, though. Curiosity has sent back a wealth of data from Mars, but it can’t last forever. Indeed, it’s wheels are getting banged up, the …