Space Exploration

  Many planetary scientists believe that Europa might be our best bet to find evidence of alien life in our own backyard. Although, it’s a big backyard, and the planned Europa Clipper mission needs a powerful rocket to reach the Jovian moon. Congress previously required that this mission launch on …

  NASA builds its hardware to last. Missions like Curiosity, Hubble, and New Horizons have survived long past their initial design life. This allows NASA to wring out every bit of science from its most successful missions, and now you can add Juno and InSight to the list. NASA has …

The parent body of the Almahata Sitta meteorites — space rocks that rained down on the Nubian Desert in Sudan in 2008 — is a 640 to 1,800 km-wide water-rich asteroid that is as yet unknown, according to new research. Hamilton et al. studied the composition of Almahata Sitta 202 …

    (Credit: sharply_done/Getty Images)In 2015, Billionaire Yuri Milner launched the Breakthrough Listen project, an effort to scan the million closest stars for radio signals that could indicate intelligent life. Astronomers working on the project have announced the discovery of just such a signal from Proxima Centauri, which is just …

  NASA has sent numerous robotic explorers to Mars over the years, examining samples and surveying the fascinating geology of the red planet. Still, we could learn much more with Mars samples to examine in detail here on Earth. The recently launched Perseverance rover will lay the groundwork by collecting …

  Every asteroid that falls to Earth is a potential window into the origins of the solar system, but scientists have stumbled upon something quite strange when studying a fragment of the Almahata Sitta asteroid. It contains evidence of a huge, previously unknown object in our solar system — perhaps …

  NASA has a wealth of space rocks, known more properly as astromaterials. Some of them came directly from the surface of the moon during the Apollo era, and others were discovered after falling to Earth in Antarctica. Now, you can check out NASA’s collection in extreme detail using the …

  Jupiter and Saturn, our solar system’s two largest worlds, have been drawing ever closer to each other in the sky in recent months as seen from our Earthly vantage, an event that has come to be known as a great conjunction. The two planets will appear closest together on …

  For years, satellite internet has been a last resort for people living in remote areas. SpaceX has made waves offering its new Starlink service to select regions with much higher speeds than traditional satellite connections — testers are reporting as much as 150Mbps down. Amazon thinks it can do …

The wings of an angelic figure, complete with halo, can be seen sweeping up and off the top of the frame in a new image from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, while a large heart sits just right of center. This image comprises data gathered by ESA’s Mars Express on November …