The New Space RaceAboutWith rainfall often occurring only once a decade, the desert is so dry that NASA uses it as a stand-in for the Martian landscape. But what’s living beneath the parched surface? New research suggests it’s very small, abundant, and old, very old. (15 hours ago)
2 days ago
One of the two oldest, active spacecraft has a new lease on life, with NASA getting the 47-year-old Voyager 1 deep space probe to send back engineering data for the first time since November 14. Until now, all the craft could return was gibberish.
2 days ago
The world's most advanced solar sail spacecraft began its odyssey today at 23:32 GMT as it lifted off atop a Rocket Lab Electron launcher from Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand. It was one of two payloads on the Beginning Of The Swarm mission.
9 days ago
NASA has given the green light for the nuclear-powered Dragonfly rotorcraft to explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Approval for the 2028 interplanetary mission comes after years of delay due to COVID-19 and a series of cost overruns.
9 days ago
NASA has completed the analysis of a chunk of metal that crashed into the roof of a house in Naples, Florida, a few weeks ago. The agency says it came from a palette of trash released from the International Space Station three years ago.
10 days ago
Future Moon bases may be a bit tidier thanks to an electric shield that protects equipment from destructive lunar dust. NASA's Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) technology promises to tame the destructive dust that clings to equipment.
11 days ago
When NASA returns to the Moon, its astronauts will enjoy tooling around in a pressurized camper van courtesy of JAXA and Toyota. The two-person vehicle is part of a US/Japan agreement that includes putting the first Japanese astronauts on the Moon.
14 days ago
NASA is gearing up to launch an advanced solar sail spacecraft later this month. Using a new boom made of lightweight polymer composites, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is scheduled to lift off on April 24.
14 days ago
Elon Musk is doubling down on his commitment to the colonization of Mars. In an address at SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica, Texas, he gave an update on how the advances in the company's Starship rocket and plummeting launch costs could one day see thousands of ships at a time heading for the Red Planet.
16 days ago
NASA engineers have narrowed down the problem with the Voyager 1 deep space probe to a single faulty chip. It may now be possible to work around the corrupted memory and return the 47-year old interstellar spacecraft to an operational condition.
18 days ago
The eclipse is about to begin. Totality will arrive at Mexico’s west coast around 11.07am local time, moving east until it leaves Newfoundland, Canada, around 5.16pm there.
21 days ago
Three Black Brant IX sounding rockets for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission are scheduled to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility launch range in Virginia. The launch window opens April 8, 2024, at 2:40 p.m. EDT.
21 days ago
Sometimes, all you need for a new discovery is some creative math. That was the case for a new paper by Edward Williams and Laurent Montési of the University of Maryland's Department of Geology. They released a brief paper at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2024) last month that describes a mathematical way to estimate the size of a lava tube using only remote sensing techniques.
21 days ago
Guessing your age might be a popular carnival game, but for astronomers it's a real challenge to determine the ages of stars. Once a star like our sun has settled into steady nuclear fusion, or the mature phase of its life, it changes little for billions of years.
22 days ago
NASA has revealed the four vehicles that astronauts will drive on the Moon, awarding contracts totaling US$4.6 billion to Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab to develop the Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) ahead of the Artemis V mission launch in 2030.
24 days ago
NASA's VIPER—short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover—now stands taller and more capable than ever, thanks to its mast.
a month ago
Three experiments have been selected to fly to the moon alongside NASA’s Artemis III astronauts, all designed to help with future long-term stays on the moon and eventually Mars.
a month ago
Douglas Vakoch of METI International explains how NASA drew on the organisation's expertise at attempting to contact extraterrestrial intelligence to help craft a message to Europa.
a month ago
Later this year, NASA is launching its Europa Clipper spacecraft to the icy moon of Jupiter. Its mission is only to investigate whether the moon is habitable, but now researchers have found that one of its instruments could look for direct signs of life.
a month ago
We might find alien life as soon as 2030, according to a new study. A lab experiment has shown that instruments on a spacecraft headed to one of the most promising worlds to find life are sensitive enough to detect a single living cell in a single ice grain.
a month ago
In preparation for a permanent human colony on the Moon, DARPA has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman to develop a lunar railway concept, as part of the 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study.
a month ago
The Starship rocket destroyed its launch pad during its first launch attempt in 2023, and the explosion resembled a powerful volcanic eruption, spraying sand and chunks of debris over a huge area.