How’s this for a long-distance call? The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has managed to beam a laser from the vast reaches of space to Southern California in what was a historic event last week. It’s also a big step toward sending astronauts to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) fired the infrared laser … Read more
Skywatchers and stargazers might see something new among the stars, planets and galaxies. Two NASA astronauts, Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, were conducting the first all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Nov. 2 when a tool bag slipped, according to Space.com. Moghbeli and O’Hara finished their spacewalk after six hours and 42 … Read more
Stargazers should enjoy Saturn’s rings while they can. NASA reports that the gas planet’s signature interstellar hula hoops are going to vanish from view in 18 months — but thankfully it’s just an optical illusion. Come March 2025, Saturn’s iconic rings — which extend from 43,500 to 87,000 miles, or the equivalent of 30 Earths … Read more
On June 16, 1963, Russia edged ahead in the Space Race with the United States when 26-year-old Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space. Soon after, the US press launched a counteroffensive, publicly denigrating Tereshkova, as Loren Grush explains in “The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts” (Scribner). “Articles … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists. It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini-moon. The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. … Read more
A recent image taken in space is turning heads and sparking questions. On Sept. 7, 2023, NASA’s Juno mission captured an image of an area in one of Jupiter’s northern regions called Jet N7, according to NASA. The image, which is of clouds and storms, caught the attention of scientists as they were studying the features. NASA said that … Read more
That’s one giant leap into the past. A recent analysis of lunar dirt brought back by the final Apollo mission in 1972 has confirmed that Earth’s satellite is 4.46 billion years old — some 40 million years more than originally thought. It’s now thought that our moon began as the giant shard of a Mars-sized … Read more
This chance of showers won’t ruin your weekend. Earthlings are in luck as one of the most awe-inspiring celestial events of the year will zip past the atmosphere shortly after midnight on Saturday morning. What is the Orionid meteor shower and when is it happening in 2023? The fast-moving Orionids, known for their fireball looks … Read more
Be careful not to fall into this burning “ring of fire” without protection. Each continental state in the union plus Alaska will be treated to a celestial spectacle as the sun, Earth, and Moon, will align to create, as NASA described it, a “ring of fire” in the sky. What is a “ring of fire” … Read more
This discovery could rock our world. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has collected samples from Bennu — a 4.5 billion-year-old “near-Earth” asteroid that has a slight chance of a planetary collision 159 years from now — and they could show, as the agency described it, “the building blocks of life on Earth.” NASA’s Origins, … Read more
Shoot for the moon — you could land a new home. By 2040, Americans could be living on the moon, despite skeptics’ doubt, a NASA spokesperson told The New York Times. “We’re at a pivotal moment, and in some ways, it feels like a dream sequence,” Niki Werkheiser, the director of technology maturation at NASA, … Read more
One small step for man, one giant leap for Prada. The Italian luxury fashion house announced Wednesday that it will be teaming up with Axiom Space to design the spacesuits for NASA’s 2025 Artemis III mission. Engineers at Prada will work side-by-side with Axiom’s systems team throughout the process of designing the lunar suits. “The … Read more
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) dropped never-before-seen photos of one of Saturn’s moons while comparing them to well-known food dishes. “Ravioli, pierogi, empanada… What do you see? No wrong answers,” NASA posted on its Instagram account Monday, accompanied by pictures of Pan, the innermost of Saturn’s moons. The photos, which were taken from the Cassini … Read more
The former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once defined success as “stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” but a new book, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well” (Atria Books), suggests that the concept of failure is significantly more complex than merely the polar opposite of whatever success might represent. … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope might have made what one expert is hailing as the “discovery of the century” — about 744 trillion miles from Earth. A team of international astronomers have “found potential evidence of life in the atmosphere of another world,” Robert Zubrin, an American aerospace engineer and advocate for human exploration of … Read more
A breakthrough instrument on NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is considered a mission success after producing enough oxygen for a small dog to breathe for about 10 hours. The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, is a microwave-sized device that takes unbreathable Martian air and turns it into oxygen humans – and dogs – rely on. … Read more
Something fishy might be happening on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover captured an image on the Red Planet of two boulders that resemble, respectively, a shark fin and a crab claw. The car-sized robot arrived on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, and has been exploring the Jezero Crater, looking for any sign that life on Mars … Read more
Things are going to get a bit rocky. A house-sized asteroid is set to soar by Earth Wednesday, with four other space rocks slated to follow in the coming days, according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch Dashboard. The near-60-foot big fella, named JA5, was discovered in 2021 and is expected to miss Earth by 3.17 million … Read more
Stargazers, listen up – Wednesday night will host a very rare event. The only blue moon of the year is also a supermoon and the last full moon of summer. Plus, Saturn makes a bright appearance near the Moon, just a few days from being its closest and brightest for the year, according to NASA. “About 25 percent … Read more
Who are the best stars for Mars? Computational social scientists at George Mason University have published a new paper that reveals the ideal types of Earthlings to inhabit Mars upon the red planet’s hopeful colonization some day. “Establishing a human settlement on Mars is an incredibly complex engineering problem,” the researchers wrote. “The inhospitable nature … Read more