Space Exploration

In a study published this month in the journal Icarus, planetary researchers from the United States and Germany modeled chemical processes in the subsurface ocean of Enceladus, the sixth-largest of Saturn’s moons. Enceladus’ tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space, creating a …

  Humans have wrestled with the nature of the universe since time immemorial, but we’ve had science to guide us in recent generations. Most experts on physics and cosmology accept the inflation model, a straight line from the Big Bang to our infinitely expanding universe. However, some scientists hold onto …

  Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission wrapped up last week when the sample container parachuted down in Australia. The mission certainly looked like a success at every step along the way, but the true test is whether or not it collected the sample it flew out there to get. Today, the Japanese …

  Today, Dec. 14, observers along a narrow path in northern Patagonia, crossing Chile and Argentina, will witness one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena: a total eclipse of the Sun. Such an event usually draws travelers from around the world. But because of COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions, few Americans …

  The Hubble Space Telescope has been spying on a very unusual exoplanet some 336 light years away. The planet, known as HD 106906 b, is 11 times the mass of Jupiter, and it orbits the binary stars at a distance of nearly 68 billion miles — 730 times greater …

Non-marine animals (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) have apparently experienced at least 10 distinct episodes of intensified extinctions over the past 300 million years. Eight of these extinction events are concurrent with known marine mass extinctions, which previously yielded evidence for an underlying period of 26.4 to 27.3 million years …

In a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal, a team of U.S. scientists combined experimentally verified data on brine evaporation rates along with a global circulation model to develop a new extensive framework of brine stability on the surface and subsurface of Mars. They found that the equatorial …

  NASA launched the Voyager probes more than 40 years ago, and the fact we’re still talking about the impact of these spacecraft is a testament to how well-planned these missions were. Both Voyager 1 and 2 are outside the solar system now, but there’s plenty to see out there …

The active Martian water cycle, i.e., the presence of shallow water and soluble perchlorate salts in the Martian soil, enables the production of hydrogen fuel and life-support oxygen on Mars through electrolysis of perchlorate brines. A team of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis has demonstrated an approach to …

  Humanity launched the first satellite in 1957, and since then we’ve put thousands of objects in orbit with little regard for the future. Along with about 3,000 active satellites, we now have 900,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters. The results could be catastrophic if even a …