Science

Following NASA‘s tense decision to pull its astronauts off Boeing’s spaceship for their ride home, lots of eyes will be on Starliner this evening to see how it performs a landing uncrewed. The capsule, which launched in June, took test pilots Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams to the International Space Station for its...

A robotic orbiter just took its first closeup pictures of Mercury’s poles, passing about 100 miles above the planet in space as the probe harnessed the small world’s gravity.   Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is perhaps the most overlooked of the rocky worlds in the solar system. Hot and harder to reach than...

Did the cosmos just hand us a meme that encapsulates our feelings about the universe and our place within it?  At times it seems as though astronomers will forever find enigmas about space without ever providing satisfying answers. But in this case, the James Webb Space Telescope has found a riddle in the sky, and scientists...

Dropping one of Apple‘s GPS AirTags into the trash may seem like a major error, but it could be key to unlocking the false, climate-forward promises of city leaders and corporations. Earlier this year, Brandy Deason, a Texas resident and climate justice coordinator for Air Alliance Houston, began dropping the small devices into every bag...

Apparently, Boeing’s troubled spaceship isn’t done giving NASA some brain teasers while it’s still in space.  Starliner’s commander, astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, asked Houston mission control on Saturday why the test capsule had started emitting strange noises from a speaker. At first the sounds weren’t audible, then Wilmore, 61, captured a better recording: an unnerving,...

With Boeing’s troubled spaceship deemed too risky to bring its crew home from space, NASA has bumped the two female astronauts set for the next International Space Station rotation to free up seats.  Zena Cardman, who would have been the SpaceX Crew-9 commander, and Stephanie Wilson were cut from the upcoming crew. NASA astronaut Nick...

As the Perseverance rover rumbled over Mars terrain scoping out rocks, seven companies spent the summer trying to figure out how to help NASA bring its samples back to Earth.  The U.S. space agency’s mission to return bits of rock, dust, and even air from the Red Planet, known as Mars Sample Return, is in...

Some 480 million miles away, an ocean — harboring perhaps twice the water of Earth’s seas — sloshes beneath the icy surface of Europa. NASA’s going there. This moon of Jupiter has long intrigued planetary scientists, as a number of missions have swooped by the world’s cracked, icy crust. Now, for the first time, a...

Imagine not eating for half a year. For the Alaskan bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve, the long winter famine always looms large. So they eat. And eat. And attempt to grow profoundly fat, because they must subsist off their fat stores for months. That’s why, in this wild northern realm, a fat bear...