Space Exploration

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, uncountable trillions of neutrinos have passed through your body. These ghostly particles rain down on us from the sun, but also from sources outside our solar system. Just a tiny fraction of neutrinos will run into anything on Earth, but …

As scientists study the stars, we’re finding exoplanets closer and closer to home. Proxima Centauri b is just a few light years away, and now astronomers have tantalizing new details about the second closest exoplanet known as Ross 128 b. Through analysis of the host star, researchers say the exoplanet …

The Cassini probe plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn last year, but we’re not done hearing about its exploits. NASA has just released an audio recording captured by the probe as it headed for its date with destiny. Of course, there’s no sound in space, but this eerie audio comes …

NASA announced last month that Mars has complex organic molecules, which could point to current or past life on the planet. There’s a lot of work to be done before we can understand the significance of this discovery, but some researchers have also started wondering why the discovery took so …

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has been through a lot during its nine years surveying the skies. It’s spotted thousands of exoplanets in far away solar systems, but it’s also suffered mechanical breakdowns that threatened to end the mission early. NASA kept Kepler running with some clever mission tweaks, but nothing will …

NASA is working toward the launch of its still unnamed Mars 2020 rover, which will bristle with scientific instruments. While it’s photographing and scanning the red planet, the 2020 rover will also collect a few dozen soil samples. It doesn’t have any way to get those samples back to Earth, …

There’s a lot of totally understandable excitement in the scientific community around exploring the Jovian moon Europa. With NASA planning to launch two multi-billion dollar missions to Europa, some scientists are pointing out that a much more tempting target is getting short shrift. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has many of the …

According to new research, at least 85% of 200,000 asteroids in the inner asteroid belt — the main source of Earth’s meteorites — originate from five or six large primordial planetesimals; the other 15% may also trace their origins to the same group of ancient bodies. This artist’s concept shows …

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has sent back stunning close-up images from its lowest-ever and final orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a boulder field near Occator crater’s eastern rim. It was obtained on June 9, 2018 from an altitude of about 30 miles (48 …

One of the difficulties of studying star and planetary formation has historically been the difficulty of confirming our hypotheses. As our understanding of the universe has expanded, our own theories have often come in for revision. We now know, based on the results of surveys like that of the Kepler …