Space Exploration

A new analysis of data collected by NASA’s Dawn orbiter suggests that organic molecules may exist in surprisingly high concentrations on the surface of Ceres. The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Organic deposits in Ernutet crater on Ceres. Image credit: Kaplan et al / NASA. Organic molecules …

Samples of interplanetary particles — collected from the upper atmosphere of Earth and believed to originate from comets — contain presolar dust from variable interstellar environments, a group of researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and elsewhere has discovered. Cometary-type interplanetary dust particle collected by NASA aircraft. Image …

Around 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted approximately 18.7 hours, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And this is at least in part because the Moon was closer and changed the way our planet spun around its axis. Professors …

NASA’s Opportunity rover has survived on Mars much longer than originally intended, but the planet is testing the little robot right now. A massive dust storm is sweeping across the landscape, blotting out the sun and leaving Opportunity stranded. However, NASA says the plucky little rover remains operational, and the …

A team of planetary researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder has offered up a new theory for the existence of strange trans-Neptunian objects — called ‘detached objects’ — such as the minor planet Sedna. An artist’s concept of the minor planet Sedna; the Sun appears as an extremely …

    (CNN)– Wished to see 16 daybreaks in one day? Drift in absolutely no gravity? Be one of the few to have gazed upon our home world from space? In just 4 years’ time, and for an astronomical $9.5 million dollars, it’s declared you can. What’s being billed as …

NASA launched the New Horizons probe to visit Pluto, and it became the first-ever spacecraft to do that several years ago. With that phase of the mission complete, what was a deep space robot to do? NASA decided to keep New Horizons going and take a look at objects in …

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has detected organic molecules in 3-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks at the base of the Murray formation at Pahrump Hills, Gale crater, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the Martian atmosphere. Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, …

Finding planets orbiting distant stars is only the first stage in the search for alien life. Most of the exoplanets detected by astronomers currently are large gas giants, and the smaller ones might be too hot, cold, or radioactive. We need to understand the environment around the host stars to …

The Mars of today is a barren and inhospitable place for living things, but scientists think it may have been very different in the past. One of NASA’s aims with the Curiosity Rover is to search for signs of ancient life on the red planet. The rover has returned a …