Space Exploration

  SpaceX is preparing for the next major milestone in the development of its next-gen Starship spacecraft. Following a successful static fire test this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced on Twitter that the company wants to perform a high-altitude test flight as early as next week. The Starship …

  Mars is a mostly dry, dusty planet these days, but the more we study it, the more we learn about its watery past. Very watery, it would seem. New findings from the Curiosity rover point to megafloods in the planet’s past. NASA couldn’t see the evidence of this event …

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found a series of symmetrical, 10-m- (33-foot-) high gravel ridges — sedimentologic evidence of ancient giant floods — in Gale Crater on Mars. This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about 4 billion years ago. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO. “We identified megafloods …

  The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has figured prominently in our coverage of the cosmos here on ExtremeTech, so we’re sad to report that this iconic radio telescope will be demolished. That’s not because of a lack of funding or to clear the way for a new dish. The …

  Astronomers have been trying to work out the nature of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) for the last several years, and a series of recent discoveries may have brought us tantalizingly close to unraveling the mystery. Last month, a team announced the discovery of an FRB in our own galaxy, …

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is bombarded by a constant and intense blast of radiation from the gas giant. Different salty compounds on the moon’s surface react differently to the radiation and emit their own unique glimmer. To the naked eye, this glow would look sometimes slightly green, sometimes slightly blue …

Water may emerge in connection with the formation of terrestrial planets, according to a new analysis of a Martian meteorite called North West Africa (NWA) 7533. An artist’s impression of the young Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org. “There are two hypotheses about the emergence …

  You could argue that Earth hasn’t been an ideal place to live lately, but it could be worse. Scientists from Canada’s McGill University have released a new analysis of an exoplanet called K2-141b. This world orbits its star so closely that its ecosystem is profoundly hellish. The ground is …

Using the spectral data collected by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a team of researchers has found a mixture of organic materials and water ice in nine impact craters on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. This colorized radar image, taken by NASA’s Cassini …

  We know much more about how the universe works today than we did just a few decades ago, but there will always be new mysteries to solve. In recent years, scientists have puzzled over the riddle of fast radio bursts (FRBs). These short-lived electromagnetic beacons can outshine entire galaxies, …