Scott Alan Johnston
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…
Cosmic Noon was Billions of Years ago, When Many Galaxies Were Filled With Star-Forming Nebulae Like This
You’re looking at NGC 346, a star cluster 210 light years away that is energetically pumping out brand new stars…
New JWST Image Shows That Grand Spiral Galaxies had Already Formed 11 Billion Years ago
For the first time this week, photos from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revealed that stellar bars were present…
Io is Having a Major Volcanic Outburst
Since last summer, Jupiter’s third largest moon, Io, has been lighting up the Jovian system with a major burst of…
Is the Milky Way… Normal?
Studying the large-scale structure of our galaxy isn’t easy. We don’t have a clear view of the Milky Way's shape…
To Fight Climate Change, We Could Block the Sun. A Lightweight Solar Sail Could Make it Feasible
Can we build an enormous umbrella to dim the Sun? Such a feat would be a megaproject on a scale…
Construction Begins on the Square Kilometer Array
At twin ground-breaking ceremonies today in South Africa and Australia, project leaders formally marked the start of construction on what…
One of the World's Biggest Radio Telescopes is Hunting for Signals From Extraterrestrial Civilizations
Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded project seeking evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, has started operations on the MeerKAT radio telescope array…
The First SLS Launch Caused Damage to the Launch Pad. How bad was it?
When you test launch the most powerful rocket ever successfully flown, there’s bound to be some collateral damage. With 8.8…
The X-37B is Back After 908 Days in Orbit. What was it Doing up There? That's Classified
At 5:22 AM Eastern Time on November 12, the Space Force’s (and Air Force’s) X-37B spaceplane landed back on Earth…