Space Exploration

Venus’ surface has never been seen by the human eye because of opaque, highly reflective clouds which permanently cover the planet. What is curious about Venus’ upper clouds is that in those clouds are mysterious dark patches, called ‘unknown absorbers’ as the tiny particles that make up them soak up …

  Development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) stretches all the way back to the mid-90s. No one at the time could have anticipated how long it would take to get the monstrously complex instrument built, but we’re in the home stretch now. Engineers at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in …

  NASA has to rethink some tried-and-true approaches to spacecraft navigation as it eyes more distant targets. Spacecraft need extremely accurate location measurements to plan maneuvers, but the way we’ve been doing that can be painfully slow. That’s why NASA launched a new prototype atomic clock into orbit recently. This …

  SpaceX has big plans for the Starship that include launching deep space missions and colonizing Mars. Before it can do any of that, it has to finish designing the vehicle. The final Starship will be a sci-fi masterpiece of stainless steel, but the Starhopper is its stubby precursor. This …

  NASA is still busy integrating the systems that will let the new Mars 2020 rover explore the red planet, but engineers took time to hook up the rover’s sole passenger this week: the Mars Helicopter. The small experimental aircraft is now installed on the belly of the rover, ready …

  It has been less than 30 years since the discovery of the first exoplanets, and we’re still in the dark when it comes to the possibility of life on any of them. Our techniques for finding other planets isn’t particularly sensitive, and we’re not even certain what signals we …

  Decorated US astronaut Anne McClain had been accused of committing the first crimes in space. McClain is going through an acrimonious divorce and her spouse, Summer Worden, has alleged that McClain committed financial improprieties by accessing financial records while serving aboard the ISS (International Space Station) and has filed …

  Most of the spacecraft in science fiction are ridiculously spacious, but real life is much less luxurious. The International Space Station (ISS) has just 388 cubic meters of habitable space, and future deep-space assignments could have astronauts serving much longer tours of duty. NASA has partnered with Sierra Nevada …

  Scientists around the world celebrated the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves several years ago, a discovery that resulted in Nobel prizes for Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish in 2017. Since then, The American LIGO and Italian Virgo instruments have spotted many more waves from the collision …

  The universe is rife with mysteries, but few are as perplexing as fast radio bursts (FRBs). These distant, highly energetic radio-frequency flashes were only discovered in 2007, and most observations have come from non-repeating sources. That makes it hard to study the phenomenon in detail. Astronomers knew of just …