Space Exploration

Most space missions rely on solar power, but a few that demand maximum reliability have a thermal nuclear power system. Human spaceflight and colonization efforts will require a lot of power that works no matter the conditions. That’s why NASA has been developing small-scale nuclear fission reactors. The space agency …

Jupiter has a whopping 69 moons, and you don’t hear a lot about the largest of them. It may not have the icy sheets of Europa or the geysers of Enceladus, but Ganymede is remarkable in its own right. In fact, it may be even more interesting than we thought. …

The Curiosity rover is still trundling around the red planet, and NASA’s next ambitious rover mission remains a few years away. However, the space agency has a non-wheeled Mars mission launching this very week, weather permitting. The InSight lander will delve deep into the interior of Mars, searching for clues …

On June 27, 1996, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made humanity’s first flyby of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, discovering that it is the only moon known to possess an internally generated magnetic field. As at Earth, Ganymede’s magnetic field projects a magnetic bubble around it called a magnetosphere. Galileo carried a package …

Researcher and scientist Michael Sori believes the crust of Mercury may be thinner and denser than previously estimated. If the finding is true, it would make the already-odd Mercury a bit more strange. Mercury orbits in a unique 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, in which the planet rotates on its axis exactly …

When Stephen Hawking died in March, we couldn’t stop reading and watching tributes. His public roles as researcher, speaker, writer, and advocate over the years have endeared this man to generations of people around the world. So in honor of this scientific giant, we’ve put together a list of his …

The ESA’s Gaia spacecraft has already been studying the Milky Way galaxy for several years, and the first release of data included the precise location of more than 2 million stars. Now, the second major dataset from Gaia has pinpointed the position and brightness of 1.7 billion stars in our …

ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has sent back its first, color images of Mars from its new, near-circular orbit. ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars. Image credit: D. Ducros / ESA. A few weeks ago, TGO reached its final orbit after a year of ‘aerobraking.’ This exciting operation …

Space agencies have sent various missions to Mars and made fascinating discoveries in the process, but getting samples back to Earth would allow for much more detailed analysis. After a false start some years ago, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to work together on a Mars …

Should astronauts ever make a trip to Uranus, they’ll want to hold their breath. Scientists have confirmed that Uranus smells really bad. That’s not a joke — well it is, but it’s also a true fact about the seventh planet in our solar system. The clouds of the gas giant …