Space Exploration

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently caught a view of China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-4 lander on the lunar surface. A January 30, 2019, image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter orbiting the Moon shows Chang’e 4 lander; arrows indicate position of the lander on the floor of Von Karman crater; …

  China is in the middle of a multi-part mission to explore the moon with unmanned landers, the most recent of which is Chang’e-4. This intrepid little probe made history when it became the first object to make a soft landing on the far side of the moon. Now, it’s …

A giant Jovian storm called Oval BA is captured in an amazing new video from NASA’s Juno mission. Oval BA and the famed Great Red Spot. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran. Oval BA is approximately 5,000 miles (8,000 km) across …

  Some 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized rock is theorized to have collided with the proto-Earth. The collision is one of the only ways to create an Earth-Moon system with the properties we observe today. It also may have partially re-liquefied Earth’s surface, destroyed Chaotian property values, and created …

  Curiosity has been on Mars for more than six years, helping scientists unravel the geological history of the red planet. It has found evidence of ancient bodies of water, organic material, and more. Curiosity was outfitted with instruments for these tasks, but NASA has managed to repurpose one of …

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully completed its first orbit of the Sun on January 19. Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben. “It’s been an illuminating and fascinating first orbit,” said Dr. Andy Driesman, Parker …

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft has obtained new images of Bennu, a 1,614-foot (492 m) wide asteroid that orbits the Sun relatively close to the Earth. This image of asteroid Bennu was captured on January 17, 2019, from a distance of about one mile. Image …

A lunar rock sample collected by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971 contains traces of minerals with a chemical composition common to Earth and very unusual for the Moon, according to research led by Dr. Jeremy Bellucci from the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Curtin University’s Professor Alexander Nemchin. The …

  The Curiosity rover has already made history after covering the most ground on another planet and helping scientists reconstruct the geological history of Mars. While it’s moved more than 12 miles (almost 20 kilometers), Curiosity has been hanging around the Vera Rubin Ridge for over a year. It’s getting …

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has beamed back the most detailed image yet of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (2014 MU69). This image from NASA’s New Horizons probe shows a Kuiper Belt object called Ultima Thule. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute. …