Space Exploration

  Today is a big day for humanity. We have bombed an asteroid, finally exacting revenge for what the asteroids did to the dinosaurs. There’s a valid scientific reason, too. The Japanese Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is collecting material from the asteroid Ryugu, and blasting it with a massive kinetic projectile is …

  All technologically advanced nations have at least a few space-based assets. In modern military conflict, those objects could become targets. Several countries have conducted tests with satellite-killing weapons, most recently India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced last week that the Mission Shakti test had successfully destroyed a satellite in …

  Back in 2013, NASA’s Mars probe Curiosity reported detecting methane on Mars. This was a significant finding — methane has been periodically detected on Mars at various points, but the gas has always vanished thereafter. Long periods of time have passed without any methane being detected in the atmosphere at …

The discovery of life on Mars would get pretty much everyone excited. But the scientists hunting for it would probably be happy no matter what the outcome of their search — whether life turned out to extinct, dormant or extant. They’d even consider finding no evidence of life whatsoever to …

Mars is dry today, but numerous ancient rivers are found across the planet’s surface and their existence is a challenge to models of planetary climate evolution. A new study, published in the journal Science Advances, catalogued these rivers to conclude that the runoff production persisted until less than three billion …

  Asteroids don’t usually put on a light show, but astronomers from Queen’s University Belfast have spotted one doing just that. The 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) object known as (6478) Gault is spinning so fast that it’s tearing itself to pieces. The result is a comet-like tail, which attracted the attention of …

  Some events in the universe are so cataclysmic the ripples in space-time can spread across billion so flight years. The existence of these “gravitational waves” was the last major prediction in Einstein’s general relativity, and scientists confirmed it in 2016 thanks to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. …

  The ESO (European Southern Observatory) has announced the successful observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. It’s the first time an exoplanet has been “seen” in this manner and the technique offers a promising example of how we might discern new information about the atmospheres of exoplanets. Such investigations …

  Jupiter’s Great Red Spot gets most of the attention when it comes to gas giant spots, but astronomers are particularly interested in what’s been happening on Neptune lately. After seeing several dark vortexes appear in the ice giant’s clouds over the decades, scientists have finally been able to watch …

  The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA are collaborating on a new experiment that seeks to understand the effects of long-term weightlessness and artificial gravity on the human body. However, this experiment won’t take place in space. Two-dozen brave volunteers will lie down and remain there. Lying around may …