Space Exploration

NASA representatives have spoken in the past about returning to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, but it was always in the vaguest of terms. The agency recently formalized its plans with the aim of building an orbital moon station called The Gateway. One glaring omission from the …

The Hubble Space Telescope is creeping ever closer to 30 years old, and nothing lasts forever. Scientists are acutely aware of that today after placing the orbiting observatory into safe mode following the failure of another gyroscope. The team is currently working to bring another gyro online, but Hubble may …

Jupiter’s moon Europa has captured the attention of scientists with its likely subsurface ocean and cracked icy shell, but visiting the distant iceball might be even harder than we thought. A new analysis of the conditions on Europa says we could encounter pointy spears of ice on the surface up …

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed a stunning close-up shot of the asteroid Ryugu captured by its Hayabusa-2 spacecraft. Hayabusa-2 image of the asteroid Ryugu as seen from a distance of 3.7 miles. A particularly large crater is visible near the center of the image. Image credit: JAXA …

Marking the anniversary of New Horizons’ historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, NASA released high-resolution natural-color images of Pluto and Charon. Pluto in true color. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / Alex Parker. These color images result …

There may be more habitable exoplanets than we previously thought, according to Pennsylvania State University researchers Bradford Foley and Andrew Smye, who suggest that plate tectonics are in fact not necessary. Their work is published in the journal Astrobiology. An artist’s impression of a potentially habitable exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com. …

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched yesterday (August 12) from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, rising off the pad atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket at 3:31 a.m. EDT. At 5:33 a.m. EDT, the mission operations manager reported that the car-sized spacecraft …

Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119, a stone meteorite found in December 2016 in Mauritania, is the world’s oldest igneous meteorite, according to new research. An artist’s rendition of NWA 11119 (far right bottom corner of illustration), the oldest-ever igneous meteorite. Image credit: University of New Mexico. “The age of NWA 11119 …

A team of researchers led by Dr. Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University has directly observed definitive evidence of surface-exposed water ice in the lunar polar regions. The distribution and abundance of the lunar ice are distinct from those on other airless bodies in the inner …

A team of researchers from the Australian National University and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has solved the mystery underlying Jupiter’s colored bands in a study on the interaction between atmospheres and magnetic fields. Magnetic fields around Jupiter can overpower zonal jets that affect atmospheric circulation. Image credit: JAXA. Jupiter …