Space Exploration

The Martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been suggested to be captured asteroids based on the similarities between the dark, red, nearly featureless spectra of these bodies and D-class asteroids. However, the capture hypothesis suffers from difficulties associated with the shapes and inclinations of the Martian moons’ orbits. A new …

Fields of sharp ice growing to almost 50 feet (15 m) tall could be scattered across the equatorial regions of Jupiter’s moon Europa, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Terrestrial penitentes from the southern end of the Chajnantor plain, Chile, in 2005; the view is …

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has detected an increase in cosmic rays that originate outside the Solar System. Currently, the probe is approximately 11 billion miles (17.7 billion km) from Earth. This image shows the position of NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, relative to the heliosphere. Image credit: NASA …

We used to wonder if there were planets outside our solar system, and today the answer to that is a resounding “yes.” Even with our admittedly crude detection methods, scientists have identified thousands of exoplanets. We had every reason to expect those planets would have moons, but we had no …

NASA’s Curiosity rover has already long outlived its minimum projected lifespan with more than six Earth years — more than 2,000 Martian days or “Sols.” However, NASA has announced that it recently had to make use of the rover’s computer redundancy to keep the mission going. Curiosity has flipped over …

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has talked a lot about how the Hayabusa2 mission aims to return a sample of the asteroid Ryugu to Earth. That might be the “main event,” but Hayabusa2 is still putting on a good opening act as it peppers the asteroid with robotic explorers. …

Years after its proposed detection, Planet 9 remains obstinately absent from our astronomical charts. Evidence for its existence is found only indirectly, in the orbits of a number of trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs, which follow trajectories around the sun that collectively imply the presence of another, larger planet in the …

The physics driving supermassive black holes are difficult to fathom even for scientists who devote their lives to studying such objects. When you add a second black hole, things get even harder to follow. Scientists have never been able to observe the collision of two black holes, but a new …

Humans aren’t built for deep space exploration. We’ve evolved to live here on Earth with an atmosphere, gravity, and a vitally important magnetic field that deflects high-energy cosmic radiation. It will take all our technological prowess to expand on to other worlds, and it won’t simply be a matter of …

We’ve been sending probes and rovers to Mars for years, but we have yet to get a sample of the red planet back to Earth. The best we can do is characterize the planet and transmit the results. If we’re going to plan for a long-term human presence on Mars, …