Talk about a sugar rush! NASA may have just come a little closer to cracking one of science’s most enduring mysteries — how life on Earth got started. The space agency has reportedly discovered life-giving essential sugars on the asteroid Bennu, a 500-meter-wide rock hurtling through space, some 200 million miles from our planet. NASA cracked … Read more
There might’ve been life on Mars after all. Although it resembles a coral typically found at the bottom of the ocean, it was a piece of rock that a NASA spacecraft — Curiosity rover — recently discovered on Mars that was supposedly formed a billion years ago. The NASA spacecraft — Curiosity rover — has … Read more
Breakfast in New York, midmorning snack in London. Taxi tests are underway on a highly anticipated supersonic plane designed to quietly break the sound barrier — and slash flight time between New York and London in half. The X-59 jet, dubbed the “son of Concorde,” is one step closer to takeoff after the experimental aircraft … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Fresh from space, NASA’s oldest full-time astronaut said Monday that weightlessness made him feel decades younger, with everyday aches and pains vanishing. Don Pettit marked his 70th birthday on April 20 by plunging through the atmosphere in a Russian Soyuz capsule to wrap up a seven-month mission at the International Space Station. In his first public … Read more
This party is sure to be far out. The Kennedy Space Center of Cape Canaveral, Florida is gearing up for a major launch in February — of an after-hours techno rave and costume party among real astronauts. “The colors of the cosmos come to life” on the evening of February 2 as the center will … 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
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
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
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
It’s the first anniversary of cosmic observations and photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA is celebrating by releasing one of its best shots yet. A new image shows a colorful close-up of a dozen of stars at the moment of birth. “On its first anniversary, the James Webb Space Telescope has already … Read more
Santa Claus needs more than his reindeer to fly. A new study published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics claims that Santa’s sleigh could actually fly with some major advancements — similar to those of NASA’s Saturn V rocket. Physics students at the University of Leicester were inspired by the scene in the 2003 … Read more