A drill for ice, a 4G network test, three rovers, and a hopping drone: a US company is hours away from its second lunar landing attempt on Thursday, aiming to advance technologies for future human missions.
When astronauts walk on the moon, they’ll serve as the eyes, hands, and boots-on-the-ground interpreters supporting the broader teams of scientists on Earth. NASA is leveraging virtual reality to provide high-fidelity, cost-effective support to prepare crew members, flight control teams, and science teams for a return to the moon through its Artemis campaign.
For decades, people have been trying to directly detect dark matter: the missing mass in our universe. Now, there’s a new, super-sensitive detector on the case—and even though it’s still in the research and development phase, it’s already been able to search for kinds of dark matter that other detectors can’t reach.
For over a century, physicists have grappled with one of the most profound questions in science: How do the rules of quantum mechanics, which govern the smallest particles, fit with the laws of general relativity, which describe the universe on the largest scales?
Curtin University researchers have discovered the world’s oldest known meteorite impact crater, which could significantly redefine our understanding of the origins of life and how our planet was shaped.
A new study by researchers including those at the University of Tokyo revealed that atmospheric gravity waves play a crucial role in driving latitudinal air currents on Mars, particularly at high altitudes.
A drill to search for ice. A 4G network test. Three rovers and a first-of-its-kind hopping drone.
A fresh look at past data reveals that exoplanets with masses similar to Jupiter formed much sooner than previously thought, according to new research. The Ohio State University study’s results provide new information about the timing of accretion—the process of accumulating a large amount of gas as well as solid particles that are rich in carbon and oxygen to make large planets, like Jupiter.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24. Three science instruments will continue to operate on each spacecraft. The moves are part of an ongoing effort to manage the gradually diminishing power supply of the twin probes.
Dust and rocks residing on the surface of the moon take a beating in space. Without a protective magnetosphere and atmosphere like Earth’s, the lunar surface faces continual particle bombardment from solar wind, cosmic rays, and micrometeoroids. This constant assault leads to space weathering.
In a new development that could help redefine the future of technology, a team of physicists has uncovered a fundamental insight into the upper limit of superconducting temperature.
The shape of a planet’s orbit is one of its fundamental properties, along with its size and distance from its host star. Earth has a nearly circular orbit, but some planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, have very elliptical orbits.
Scientists from UNSW Sydney have located a potential new exoplanet—a planet that orbits a star outside of our solar system—using a technique known as “transit timing variation.”
During NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to launch in March, select members of the four-person crew will participate in exercise and medical research aimed at keeping astronauts fit on future long-duration missions.
With a sun more than 4.5 billion years old, our solar system is considered “middle-aged,” and the pictures of what it might have looked like in its infancy are lost to time. Taking advantage of a sophisticated adaptive optics instrument, a team of astronomers at the University of Arizona made observations that reveal unprecedented details of planets when they are very young.
Sometimes scientists must dig and work and sweat to make scientific discoveries. And sometimes a robot rolls over a rock that turns out to be a revelation.
When a mudflat crumbles on Earth, or an ice sheet splinters on one of Jupiter’s moons (Europa), or an ancient lakebed breaks on Mars, do these fractures follow a hidden geometric script? Could similar patterns on another planet hint that water once existed there—and possibly sustained life?
For decades, scientists assumed that only large ocean temperature patterns covering 200 kilometers (124 miles) or more could strongly influence storms. Now, by leveraging advances in computing power, a team of scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered that small-scale ocean processes can have a much larger influence on storm development than previously thought.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now aiming for Wednesday to conduct the next test flight of its massive Starship rocket, following a last-minute cancellation on Monday.
If there were such a thing as a photo album of the universe, it might include snapshots of pancake-like disks of gas and dust, swirling around newly formed stars across the Milky Way. Known as planet-forming disks, they are believed to be a short-lived feature around most, if not all, young stars, providing the raw materials for planets to form.
