Space Exploration

New Horizons launched with a singular purpose: scan the ninth planet up close for the first time ever. Pluto was the ninth planet when New Horizons launched in 2006, but it was just a dwarf planet when the probe got there in 2015. It was still an incredible moment for …

Astronomers have identified thousands of exoplanets with the aid of instruments like the Kepler Space Telescope, but we don’t know much about most of those worlds. From a great distance, Earth and Venus would appear to be very similar, but of course, we know that Earth is quite habitable and …

It has been seven long years since the Space Shuttle retired from service, and American astronauts have been hitching rides on Russian Soyuz rockets ever since. NASA has to pay big bucks for every seat on a Soyuz mission, but the long-delayed Commercial Crew Program is supposed to change that …

NASA’s Opportunity rover has been rolling around the surface of the red planet for an amazing 14 years. The rover’s expected operational life was a mere 90 sols (about three Earth months), but it just kept on going.  It’s looking increasingly likely that the planet’s global dust storm has ended …

  The Eta Carinae system has fascinated astronomers for decades, and we may be one step closer to understanding this bizarre solar system today. Eta Carinae consists of at least two stars with a combined luminance of more than 5 million times that of our sun. Between 1837 and 1858, …

As humanity expands its understanding of the universe, we’ve realized that planets are not rare. With the aid of instruments like Hubble and Kepler, astronomers have identified thousands of exoplanets out there among the stars. The so-called “ultrahot Jupiters” have left researcher scratching their heads because they don’t seem to …

Researchers have detected a rogue planet traveling the void between stars some 20 light years away. Rogue planets or brown dwarfs (which this might be) aren’t exactly rare, cosmologically speaking, but they tend to be very difficult to see. And yet, the way we found this particular planet/brown dwarf suggests …

NASA is preparing to launch a mission that will go where no probe has gone before: the sun. Not just in orbit of the sun, either. The Parker Solar Probe will come as close as possible to touching the sun without being swallowed up by waves of superheated plasma. Parker …

NASA launched the planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) spacecraft earlier this year. After a longer than expected shakedown period, it started collecting scientific data in late July. Before that, engineers on the ground put the probe through its paces to make sure it would be able to spot distant …

Astronomers usually confirm new exoplanets a few at a time — maybe five or ten in a single announcement. Today, researchers from the University of Tokyo have certified a whopping 44 new exoplanets in a single go. The planets mostly orbit close to their host stars, and they tend toward …