Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface
It seems like every month, a new story appears announcing the discovery of thousands of new asteroids. Tracking these small…
Webb Sees a Star in the Midst of Formation
Wherever the JWST looks in space, matter and energy are interacting in spectacular displays. The Webb reveals more detail in…
Meeting Mercury at Dusk in July
Mercury puts on one of its best apparitions for 2024 this month.
A New View of Olympus Mons
After 100,000 orbits and almost 23 years on Mars, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has seen a lot. The spacecraft was…
LEGO Bricks Printed out of Space Dust
There have been many proposals for building structures on the Moon out of lunar regolith. But here’s an idea sure…
Basketball-Sized Meteorites Strike the Surface of Mars Every Day
NASA's InSight Mars Lander faced some challenges during its time on the red planet's surface. Its mole instrument struggled to…
More Evidence that the Kuiper Belt is Bigger Than We Thought
As the New Horizons spacecraft continues its epic journey to explore the Kuiper Belt, it has a study partner back…
A Concentrated Beam of Particles and Photons Could Push Us to Proxima Centauri
Getting to Proxima Centauri b will take a lot of new technologies, but there are increasingly exciting reasons to do…
Plate Tectonics Might Only Occur on 0.003% of Planets. That Makes Earth Very Special Indeed.
Plate tectonics, oceans, and continents might just be the secret ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological…
Alpha Centauri Could Have a Super Jupiter in Orbit
The three-body problem is one of Nature's thorniest problems. The gravitational interactions and resulting movements of three bodies are notoriously…