Over the past few days, NASA’s Curiosity rover has been making a steady climb towards a strange Martian ridge that’s captivated scientists since before the mission even started. Known as Vera Ridge after the pioneering astrophysicist Vera Rubin, the durable outcrop could shed new light on the environment and potential…
Space has a funny way of making us feel both incredibly small yet infinitely lucky for being part of such a vast cosmic sorority. Of course, humans have barely scratched the surface of the final frontier—we’ve never even sent people beyond the Moon. While many uncrewed spacecraft have done an incredible job of…
Before now-Tropical Storm Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys, killing at least nine and doing untold damage, then-Hurricane Irma barreled through the Caribbean, killing dozens and flattening entire islands.
Something just popped into one NASA telescope’s view, and it isn’t a star or a meteor—it’s one of our spacecraft. It’s hurtling towards planet Earth right now.
The end is nigh for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, the intrepid probe that’s been studying the Saturn system for the last 13 years. On Friday, September 15th, Cassini will plunge itself into Saturn’s atmosphere with its antenna pointed toward Earth, becoming part of the place it’s called home all these years.
Though Cassini only has a few days left to study Saturn before it dies, it’s seriously making them count. Today, NASA released what it says are “the highest-resolution color images of any part of Saturn’s rings.” In true Cassini fashion, they’re absolutely mesmerizing.
The universe is very good at making us feel both extremely insignificant and lucky enough to be part of something huge. No missions have made this clearer than NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, which have been exploring the cosmos for 40 years. Today, Voyager 1 officially turns the big 4-0, which it’s celebrating by cruising…
The US Air Force’s secretive X-37B spaceplane returned to Earth back in May after a mysterious two years in orbit. Nobody knows what it was doing up there, since the mission is highly classified, but it’s heading back into orbit in just a couple of days. And this time it’s getting a little help from SpaceX.
Peggy Whitson, who touched down on Saturday night in Kazakhstan at 9:21pm EST, departed Earth just a few days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. In the interim, she’s been merrily tweeting down about her exercise regimen, space fashions, space cooking, and space toilet upkeep. Space sounds…
NASA astronaut and biochemist Peggy Whitson will return to Earth as the planet’s new record holder for longest time cumulatively spent on space by an American or a woman this weekend, touching down in a Russian Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan at 7:22am local time (9:22pm Eastern).
This week, NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC)—home of the space agency’s Mission Control—became an island in a sea of floodwater. After staggering amounts of damage in Houston, today, Tropical Storm Harvey made landfall once again bringing torrential downpours to areas of Southeast Texas and Louisiana. Somehow, against…
As Cassini’s tour of Saturn comes to a close, NASA’s getting a bit nostalgic. Yesterday, the space agency released a photo of Saturn’s North pole the doomed spacecraft took on April 26th—the day it started its Grand Finale. It’s almost poetic to have a photo of Cassini staring into the void before it perishes within…
Everyone forgets about Venus because it’s not Mars. Or Saturn. Or Jupiter, for that matter. Or, maybe it’s because Venus is a toxic wasteland. Still, the second planet from the Sun deserves a little more credit than it currently gets. Recently, a team of researchers NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory dropped their…
The potential of striking gold at a thrift store can be very much dependent on where that store is located. Given NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is just an hour away, a pair of college students in Orlando were lucky enough to find six vintage flight suits buried in a box at a Salvation Army store that was going out of…
Oh Florence, we really needed you this month. There’s a petulant species of brainy monkeys apes that just can’t seem to get along that probably deserves to be completely wiped out in a fiery collision. But there you go, flying right on by.
Monday’s total solar eclipse will provide some much-needed wholesome enjoyment for all of us here in the United States. To make things even sweeter, NASA—in collaboration with researchers at Montana State University—will be seizing the opportunity to launch some giant balloons during the event.
Good news, everyone! The Earth is still like a car with the windows rolled up, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is coming by with the keys anytime soon.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is one of the universe’s only unproblematic faves. For over 39 years, it’s been cruising along in space, flying by Saturn and the Kuiper Belt, doing nothing but beaming back beautiful photos and scientific research. Now, the intrepid spacecraft—skirting serenely in interstellar space—is…
As things here on Earth become increasingly more Theater of the Absurd, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft whizzes millions of miles away, unaffected by our intra-human squabbling. After 20 years of heading toward and exploring the Saturn system, on September 15th, Cassini will plunge itself into the planet’s atmosphere,…
Last month, NASA’s Curiosity rover captured some of the most remarkable images of Martian clouds we’ve ever seen. Now rare, these Earth-like cirrus clouds are a glimpse into the Red Planet’s distant past.
