How Can We Know if We’re Looking at Habitable exo-Earths or Hellish exo-Venuses?
The differences between Earth and Venus are obvious to us. One is radiant with life and adorned with glittering seas,…
The Historic Discussion of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog
From the time of its writing in the 2nd century CE, Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest stood at the forefront of mathematical…
The First Stars May Have Weighed More Than 100,000 Suns
The universe was simply different when it was younger. Recently astronomers have discovered that complex physics in the young cosmos…
Drag Sail Success! This Satellite Won't Turn Into Space Junk
The European Space Agency successfully tested a solar-sail-type device to speed up the deorbit time for a used cubesat carrier…
Good News! Webb is Fully Operational Again
The James Webb Space Telescope is back to full science operations. One of the telescope’s instruments, the Near Infrared Imager…
Soon Every Spacecraft can Navigate the Solar System Autonomously Using Pulsars
If you want to know where you are in space, you’d better bring along a map. But it’s a little…
Astronomers Come Closer to Understanding How Mercury Formed
Simulations of the formation of the solar system have been largely successful. They are able to replicate the positions of…
Rolls-Royce Reveals a Nuclear Reactor That Could Provide Power on the Moon
Rolls-Royce has released a teaser about the "micro-reactor" they are developing in partnership with the UK Space Agency.
Astronomers Detect a Second Planet Orbiting Two Stars
Planets orbiting binary stars are in a tough situation. They have to contend with the gravitational pull of two separate…
Don’t Bother Trying to Destroy Rubble Pile Asteroids
The asteroids in our Solar System are survivors. They've withstood billions of years of collisions. The surviving asteroids are divided…