Perseverance Drills Another Hole, and This Time the Sample is Intact
After failing in its first try, the Perseverance rover just successfully obtained a rock sample from the Martian surface that…
White Dwarfs can Continue Burning Hydrogen, Even After They’re Dead
White dwarfs are supposed to be dead remnants of stars, doomed to simply fade away into the background. But new…
Protoplanetary Disks Throw Out More Material Than Gets Turned Into Planets
When a young solar system gets going it's little more than a young star and a rotating disk of debris.…
Space Continues to be Hard. Firefly’s Alpha Rocket Detonates Shortly After Launch
Rocket science is hard. So far, no commercial rocket launch company has ever successfully gotten to orbit on the first…
Ground-Based Observatories Could use Starshades to see Planets too
All hail the occulter: an orbiting starshade for ground-based telescopes. (more…)
This is a 3D-Printed Steel Floor Prototype for a Lunar Habitat
The ESA's has unveiled a key piece of their proposed lunar habitat, a 3D-printed steel floor frame.
NASA has too Many Spacecraft to Communicate With. Time to Build More Dishes
NASA is a sprawling organization that has to talk to everything from politicians in Washington DC to space probes that…
Pencil December 18th (tentatively) into your calendar. That’s when James Webb probably launches
You may have heard this one before, but encouraging news comes from NASA, ESA, and Arianespace today: they are now…
What Formed the Strange Troughs on Vesta?
New research suggests that the humble asteroid Vesta may have cracked open like an egg. (more…)
A Flurry of Fall Binocular Comets
Fall 2021 offers up an all-night parade of challenging telescopic comets.