Carolyn Collins Petersen
Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From
Every day meteoroids blast through our planet's atmosphere to hit the ground as meteorites. A team of researchers in Italy…
JWST Turns its Gaze on the Farthest Known Star: Earendel
In March 2022, astronomers announced the discovery of the farthest known star via an image taken by the Hubble Space…
Curiosity Had to Route Around a 23-Degree Slope to Reach a Fascinating Field of Craters
It's hard to believe, but Mars Curiosity Rover has been on Mars doing its thing for 11 years. And, so…
Follow a Simulated Journey of the Destruction of ESA’s Aeolus Mission
On July 28th, the European Space Agency commanded its long-working Aeolus wind profile mission to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. It did…
Yes! A JWST Image of the Ring Nebula
Brace yourselves for great JWST views of the iconic Ring Nebula (M57). An international team of astronomers just released a…
Tether a Sunshade to an Asteroid to Slow Down Climate Change
It probably comes as no surprise to people suffering through drastic weather this year that our planet is heating up.…
Oops. NASA Accidentally Points Voyager 2’s Antenna Away from Earth, Temporarily Losing Contact
It's every space mission's nightmare: losing contact with the spacecraft. In the best case, you recover it right away. Worst…
Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space
What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b,…
JWST Pierces Through a Thick Nebula to Reveal Newly Forming Binary Stars
In 1985, the physicist Heinz Pagels wrote that star birth was a "veiled and secret event." That's because the stellar…
How Did Supermassive Black Holes Grow So Quickly, So Early?
Supermassive black holes haunt the cores of many galaxies. Yet for all we know about black holes (not nearly enough!),…