Next week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is planning to fulfill a childhood ambition, one made possible by virtue of his status as one of the richest men in the world. Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in recent days exactly 27 years after founding the e-commerce giant, also leads his own private space company, …
The Milky Way is our home, and for the entirety of human existence, it has treated us pretty well. Earth and our solar system just kinda chill out here in one of the galaxy’s curvy arms, living our day-to-day lives in relative peace, at least in cosmic terms. Fast forward 4.5 billion years, however, and …
Exoplanet discoveries used to be nothing but a dream for scientists, but new telescope technology and more advanced observation techniques have made the task of finding planets outside of our solar system easier than ever. In fact, so many new exoplanets are being found these days that scientists have to pick and choose which ones …
We like to think the world revolves around us but unfortunately, it revolves around the Sun. Our Sun is one of the reasons we’re all here, and without it we’d be gone in a hurry. So, it makes a lot of sense that scientists like those at NASA want to learn absolutely everything that they …
For better or worse, the space race of the 1960s truly defined what nations would be major players in space exploration over the following decades. The United States and Russia have the most accomplishments under their belts when it comes to venturing off of Earth, and the rest of the world has spent a long …
Earth is great, but what if it were bigger? So-called “super-Earths” are rocky worlds like our own but are several times bigger, and could offer us a new home if we ever were to leave our solar system. Some of the super-Earths that scientists have discovered are too far away from their star to be …
It’s now been a couple of weeks since NASA’s Perseverance rover landed safely on Mars. The mission almost never left Earth due to the coronavirus pandemic but NASA managed to squeeze the launch in at the very last moment and, after months of travel, the rover managed to stick its landing perfectly. Of course, the …
Finding planets outside of our solar system is an area of research that has exploded in recent years. As new, more powerful observational equipment allows us to look into space with greater detail than ever before, spotting the telltale signs of planets orbiting other stars has become much easier, and new exoplanet discoveries are happening …
The International Space Station is, well, old. It’s still working great and fulfilling the needs of NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, Japan’s JAXA, and the European Space Agency, among others, but it’s definitely not as cutting-edge as it once was. The groups responsible for maintaining the spacecraft have done a great job of keeping it up and …
Scientists believe there are some very basic things that are required for a planet to support life, including water and an atmosphere. We’ve yet to spot a planet that looks like Earth, with continents, water, and, of course, life. New research from the University of Copenhagen suggests that planets like Earth might actually be abundant …
