It’s actually good news that NASA spotted a sizable asteroid with a (small) chance of hitting Earth in 2032. It means our asteroid-sleuthing telescopes are working. “These things come through on a regular basis,” Jason Steffen, an astronomer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Mashable. “The fact that we’re seeing something around a […]

On Dec. 27, 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft swooped by the volcanic world Io. It witnessed a giant eruption. As the space agency’s basketball court-sized craft orbits Jupiter, it swings near the gas giant’s intriguing moons, which allowed Juno to observe “a massive hot spot” near Io’s south pole. Juno’s JIRAM instrument, which can detect heat, […]

Scientists poring over a sample brought back from the asteroid Bennu have detected amino acids and complex mineral compounds, some of which have never been found in space rocks. A team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History discovered a salty residue left over from an ancient brine. Through evaporation, it formed minerals rich […]

The James Webb Space Telescope is peering into distant worlds and rewriting our grasp of the cosmos. And in 2025, its budget is on track to get slashed. At January’s Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Tom Brown, who heads Webb’s mission at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), showcased the observatory’s achievements, while also […]

Scientists found an intriguing world in our galaxy. They confirmed the existence of a rocky planet, called a “super-Earth,” that’s some six times as massive as Earth. While the world HD 20794 d is larger than our planetary home, it’s relatively low-mass compared to the huge and inhospitable Jupiter-like gas giants out there. Importantly, it […]

Planes that fly faster than the speed of sound create thunderous supersonic booms. But with NASA’s X-59 plane, that could change. The space agency plans for the aircraft’s first flight in 2025, an endeavor that seeks to turn the booms to “barely audible” thumps and make supersonic flight possible over land. Over a half-century ago, […]

The car-sized Curiosity rover has spotted evidence of once quite hospitable environs on Mars. As shown in the imagery below, the NASA robot investigated dried-up lake beds and captured views of ripple formations on their ancient shorelines. Like on Earth, these ripples were almost certainly formed by small waves on open-air (not ice-covered) lakes, planetary […]

Astronauts will wriggle into their spacesuits next week to swab outside the International Space Station and see if the lab orbiting 250 miles above Earth is releasing microorganisms into space.  The experiment will focus on collecting samples of bacteria and fungi near vents. NASA wants to know whether germs can survive the harsh environment and, […]