Boeing and SpaceX, owing to manufacturing delays and certification hurdles, are unlikely to provide NASA with the vehicles required to transport astronauts to the International Space Station next year, according to an alarming government report. As a result, and starting in late 2019, the U.S. might not have a crew…
A Russian-built spacecraft has reached the International Space Station in less than four hours, making it the fastest supply mission to space in history.
NASA’s storied Kepler Space Telescope—the craft which has discovered thousands of exoplanets since its launch in 2009—is entering the retirement phase of its lifespan. NASA announced on Friday that Kepler staff had “received an indication that the spacecraft fuel tank is running very low” and “placed the spacecraft in…
Whether it’s rovers rolling about on Mars, probes drilling into asteroids, or Tesla Roadsters drifting through space, it’s clear that our activities in the Solar System are changing. Accordingly, methods and rules to prevent our germs from spreading beyond Earth need to be updated, according to a new report aimed…
Despite being wildly different from Earth in almost every way, Jupiter does feature some familiar phenomena—including aurorae, what we call the Northern and Southern lights. But Jupiter’s aurorae have something Earth’s don’t: strange features caused by the Jovian moons.
Thank you, Juno spacecraft, for this glorious new image of Jupiter’s southernmost regions—and for reminding us of the beauty that exists within our tumultuous Solar System.
The Rosetta mission’s Philae lander descended toward the two-and-a-half-mile-wide comet at a human’s walking pace. For seven tense hours, scientists in Darmstadt, Germany monitored its radio signal. They would have no idea whether they’d done everything correctly until after the moment of touchdown. If all went well,…
Introducing CIMON, a floating, basketball-sized robot that will serve as a companion and assistant to crew members aboard the International Space Station. Infused with artificial intelligence, the floating bot is reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but far less evil. We hope.
Following an independent review, NASA’s planned James Webb Space Telescope has received yet another delay in its mission schedule. This time, NASA has moved the target launch from May 2020 to March 2021.
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, who was slated to be the first African-American spacefarer to serve as a long-term crew member on the International Space Station until she was pulled from the roster in January, is still waiting on an explanation of why.
For the past two weeks, a massive dust storm has churned on Mars, forcing NASA to put its Opportunity rover into hibernation mode. But Curiosity, a rover on the other side of the planet, is now feeling the effects of the storm as well, revealing the dramatic, planet-size scale of this dusty weather system.
We’ve long said that humans generally worry about the wrong asteroids. Tabloids love to publish headlines about “potentially hazardous asteroids,” a category created by NASA that can be a bit misleading. The truly worrisome rocks are the smaller ones that we aren’t tracking.
The US Government Accountability Office released a scathing report in May claiming that NASA’s most expensive projects have “deteriorated” significantly in the past year both in terms of added costs and scheduling delays. Earlier today, NASA had to explain itself in front of a Congressional subcommittee, where it…
The question of who owns the moon is at the center of a new lawsuit filed against NASA by a woman who wants to keep a vial of lunar dust gifted to her by astronaut Neil Armstrong.
A massive dust storm on Mars has forced NASA to temporarily suspend operations of its Opportunity rover.
As unearthly as it may be, Jupiter shares a phenomenon with our own planet that you might find very familiar: lightning strikes. And lightning on Jupiter is somehow both more (and less) like the lightning on Earth than scientists previously thought.
The Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter was supposed end its mission by crashing into the gas giant next month. Not anymore!
You may have heard about the White House’s plans to privatize the International Space Station and turn low-Earth orbit into a place of business that NASA can become a customer of, rather than its sponsor. Now, according to an interview with the Washington Post, NASA’s recently confirmed Jim Bridenstine has begun…
A meteor lit up the sky over Botswana, Africa, early Saturday evening. Scientists discovered the six-foot-wide asteroid just hours before it reached Earth.
Alan Bean, the fourth of just 12 people to walk on the moon and one of the first Americans to spend an extended period living on a space station, died Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86.
