ESO’s Very Large Telescope Spots a Solar System in the Making
The aptly named telescope captured the first confirmed image of a planet coming together. A young dwarf star, named PDS 70, is home to at least one planet carving a…
How You Can Create Stunning Jupiter Images With Juno Data
NASA’s Juno spacecraft is in the midst of another long 53-day orbit of Jupiter. Yesterday (June 21), NASA and the Juno team released a new image put together by a…
Curiosity Rover Stays Busy as Dust Storm Rages on Mars, Snaps Selfie
A Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator means NASA’s Curiosity rover always stays busy, dust or shine. Not even an intense dust storm can keep the rover down. While the Opportunity rover had…
NASA’s Hardy Opportunity Rover Has Made It Through a Martian Dust Storm Before
NASA’s Opportunity Rover wasn’t even designed to make it through a dust storm. Why would it have been? The team designed the rover to last for its 90-day mission. A…
A Tiny Satellite Headed to Mars Looks Back at Earth
A few days after launching from the California coast, a satellite about the size of a briefcase looked back towards Earth and our lunar neighbor and snapped a picture. It’s…
Hubble’s Powerful Optics Received a Gravity Assist to Spot a Single Star 9 Billion Light Years Away
Officially designated MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1 (nicknamed Icarus), this star is the farthest ever seen. Now, we’ve seen galaxies further away (with stars within them) – but this is…
SpaceX Nails It Again, Successfully Places 10 Iridium NEXT Satellites Into Low-Earth Orbit
This morning’s launch marks the 24th successful launch in a row for SpaceX. A Falcon 9 rocket thundered into the early morning sky above California’s coast carrying the fifth set…
A Fresh Batch of Exoplanets Were Just Confirmed Orbiting Cool Red Dwarf Stars
NASA’s Kepler along with a pair of telescopes on Earth confirmed 15 new exoplanets recently. All of them orbiting red dwarf stars. One of the brighter red dwarfs, dubbed K2-155,…
NASA’s Curiosity Rover is On Its Way Back to Drilling on Mars
In December 2016, a critical part of Curiosity’s drill stopped working. Two stabilizers flanking the drill bit steady the drill against its target rock. You can see how the setup…
New Kepler Exoplanet Discoveries Includes the Brightest Star With a Confirmed Planet Orbiting It
Add another 95 exoplanets to the total tally discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. One of them orbits the brightest star, HD 212657, confirmed to have a planet around it. Andrew…
Two Tiny Satellites Will Kickstart SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Project This Weekend
This Saturday morning, a SpaceX Falcon 9 will take off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. It’s main mission? To deliver a 3,000-pound radar observation satellite called Paz for the…
New Horizons Sets Another First, This Time With Its Camera
Fastest spacecraft ever launched at 36,373 miles per hour (when it left Earth orbit)? Check. First to explore Pluto? Already done. First to explore the Kuiper Belt? Doing it as…
A Test Chamber on Earth Illustrates the Challenges of Putting a Submarine on Titan
Sometime in the next 20 years, NASA hopes to launch an ambitious robotic explorer to Saturn’s moon Titan. It won’t be the wheel-based rovers we’re used to seeing on Mars,…
Even The Sahara Is Getting In On The Snow Action This Winter
The sandy dunes of the Sahara in northwest Algeria found themselves under up to a foot of snow in some spots earlier this month. But the snow didn’t last long.…
Our Solar System is the Weird One Says Recent Study on Alien Worlds
Planetary systems outside our own tend to follow a similar pattern. The planets are usually around the same size and each one spaced at regular intervals. That’s according to a…
Soar Through the Marvelous Orion Nebula in This 3-D Visualization
The Orion Nebula is one of the most incredible sights in the night’s sky. Even the smallest telescopes reveal swirls of gas and dust shrouding the stellar nursery. This week,…
NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Could Revolutionize How Worlds are Explored
NASA’s New Frontiers program is home to groundbreaking missions like New Horizons, Juno, and OSIRIS-REx. This week, two finalists were chosen for a robotic mission planned to launch in the…
A Look at the Science Aboard the Dragon Capsule’s Second Trip to the ISS
On Sunday morning, NASA’s Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba used the ISS robotic arm to grab hold of SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule for the second time. The Dragon Capsule returns…
Is ‘Oumuamua More Than a Space Rock? Astronomers Are Going to Give It a Listen
It’s probably just a chunk of space rock, but the Breakthrough Listen program is going to give ‘Oumuamua a listen. First discovered by the Pan-STAARS telescope in Hawaii back in…
NASA is Becoming Quite the Fan of SpaceX’s Reusable Stuff
In June, a brand new Falcon 9 rocket carried supplies aboard a reused SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. It was the first time the Dragon spacecraft had…
‘Oumuamua is Just Passing Through Our Cosmic Backyard
‘Oumuamua is a Hawaiian term for scout or messenger. And it’s a perfect name for a chunk of space rock that was discovered last month by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope.…
Tonight’s Leonid Meteor Shower Peak Is All About Quality Over Quantity
Tonight doesn’t get much better for watching a meteor shower. But it’s not the number that will impress. Peak rates in the early hours of Saturday morning will be just…
Enceladus’ Core Could Explain How Its Ocean Gets All That Heat
NASA’s Cassini mission is no longer with us, but its legacy lives on in the research using its data. Today, that research takes a closer look at Enceladus – one…
Catch Up With New Horizons in Four Minutes
What was. What is. And what’s coming. NASA recently released a four-minute video touching on some of the discoveries already made by the hardy Pluto probe. We also get a…