NASA’s space-worthy nuclear reactor could be ready to fly by 2022
Today, scientists dream of one day building settlements on the Moon and even Mars, where research can be conducted and human travelers can live safely …
Space
ESA’s Mars mission hits snag after second parachute test failure
Sending a spacecraft to Mars is no easy feat, but landing it on the Red Planet without making a crater is equally challenging. The European …
Scientists tasked a supercomputer with building millions of simulated universes
Figuring out how our reality took shape over billions of years is no easy task for scientists. Theories about how the Big Bang played out …
Astronomers just found a black hole so huge it makes our galaxy’s black hole look like a baby
At the heart of our home galaxy is a supermassive black hole that gobbles up anything that gets too close. It’s huge, with a mass …
Dead planets beam ‘zombie’ radio signals into space for up to a billion years, scientists say
New exoplanet discoveries have been popping up with increasing regularity in recent years thanks to technological advances that allow scientists to spot evidence of their …
Hubble just snapped a glorious new image of Jupiter
The Hubble Space Telescope is really, really good at spotting distant objects in space, but it’s just as well-suited for catching a snapshot of planets …
It took an incredibly long time for the Earth’s poles to flip
If you’re looking for some kind of apocalyptic scenario to get anxious about, the Earth’s poles flipping is as good a nightmare as any. Scientists …
NASA’s Curiosity rover stumbled upon a Martian rock that tells an incredible story
We tend to think of rocks as being, well, pretty boring. We find them pretty much everywhere here on Earth, and while some are neat …
Study details how radiation exposure will mess with Mars travelers’ minds
Pretend, for a moment, that you’re one of the first travelers taking a trip to Mars. What would be on your mind? Surely the journey …
NASA just received a major data dump from its mission to ‘Touch the Sun’
We’re rapidly approaching the one-year anniversary of the launch of NASA’s much-hyped mission to “Touch the Sun” with its Parker Solar Probe. The spacecraft is …
Scientists spotted an incredibly old star breathing its dying breath
Age is a relative thing. With our finite (and relatively short) lifespans, humans tend to think of anything older than 100 years as being “really …
The most accurate model of our galaxy ever created shows the Milky Way is warped
Considering we can’t actually see the Milky Way from the outside — since, you know, we’re in it — astronomers know a surprising amount about …
Astronomers stumble upon a new kind of star, and it’s a heavy breather
Humans don’t yet possess the technology required to visit neighboring stars, but astronomers can still learn a great deal about them just by looking. The …
Scientists just discovered a planet shaped like a football
If you were to make a list of exoplanets that would be worth visiting in person, WASP-121b wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of your …
Solar sails actually work, and LightSail 2 just proved it
The idea seems totally crazy: A spacecraft with no active propulsion system that can travel through space using light in the same way that a …
NASA’s exoplanet hunter just spotted a ‘super Earth’ orbiting a nearby star
In its 15 months of service, NASA’s TESS exoplanet-hunting satellite has racked up many exciting exoplanet discoveries, but few show promise in the search for …
NASA wants you to come up with a way to send heavy stuff to the Moon
The NASA of today is a whole lot different than the agency that first sent humans to the Moon. While those projects were almost entirely …
Apollo 11 installed an experiment on the Moon that is still working today
NASA’s Apollo 11 mission broke new ground in a lot of obvious ways. Landing humans on the lunar surface was a huge accomplishment, as was …
NASA’s TESS planet hunter just spotted a trio of new worlds
NASA’s TESS — Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — has been scanning the skies for a little over a year now and it’s already returned a …
A surprisingly large asteroid just sneaked up on Earth, and the Sun is to blame
Thanks to powerful telescopes that can detect large objects at extreme distances, we earthlings have a pretty good idea of the space rocks that pose …
Watch scientists endure the intense shaking of a Marsquake simulation
Humans have never set foot on Mars, but that’s not stopping scientists from doing their best to understand what it might be like when that …
There may be far more water on the Moon than previously thought
When NASA and other space agencies from around the world eventually send humans back to the Moon in the coming decades they’ll likely be doing …
Astronomers now believe our galaxy once swallowed a smaller galaxy
For astronomers, discovering new worlds, stars, and even entire galaxies is really only half the battle. Once discovered, explaining how new features of space formed, …
NASA legend who helped propel astronauts to the Moon dies days after Apollo 11 anniversary
Chris Kraft, NASA’s first flight director and a huge driving force behind the mission that eventually sent astronauts to the Moon, died just days after …
India successfully launches Moon mission after earlier scrub
India’s Space Research Organization expected to launch its Chandrayaan-2 mission last week, pushing the country one big step closer to becoming the fourth country to …
Look up! China’s Tiangong-2 space lab is about to fall back to Earth
Today is an important day for China’s space agency. No, the country isn’t launching anything new into space, and in fact, it’s sort of the …
Red wine may hold a secret that will keep Mars travelers fit
As NASA slowly inches towards the day when it can finally send human travelers to Mars, scientists are doing their best to make sure those …
Moons that escape their planets are now called ‘ploonets’
Late last year, astronomers decided that moons which orbit other moons should get their own special name. The label “moon-moon” was offered — and promptly …
Scientists think they’ve found all the ‘missing’ iron in the universe
These days, scientists think they have a pretty good idea of what the universe is made of. By detecting the telltale signatures of various elements …
Astronomers just spotted an asteroid that loves the Sun
Thanks to astronomers and their constant search for new bodies moving throughout our solar system, we know about a lot of asteroids. Many of them …
