Science

A complex mission to Mercury that began its epic space voyage six years ago has encountered critical thrust problems that controllers say could imperil plans to study the closest planet to the sun.  BepiColombo, a joint European and Japanese mission, is on its way to reach Mercury on Sept. 5 for the first of three...

Mars is collecting artifacts. Without the large, powerful camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which observes Martian terrain for past evidence of water and how the Red Planet is changing, we might miss it. But the craft captured the space agency’s defunct InSight lander and surrounding landing site, slowly being blanketed in desert dust. “Can...

From time to time, the sun discharges billions of tons of solar matter, traveling millions of miles per hour, straight at Earth. Yet humans and life on the surface aren’t physically harmed by the intense space radiation. That’s why, when the strongest solar impact to occur in over 20 years recently hit, you may have...

An MIT astronomy class has found three of the oldest stars in the universe lurking right outside the Milky Way.  The stars, about 30,000 light-years from Earth, are in the galaxy’s “halo,” the cloud of stars surrounding the main galactic disk in space, and are estimated to have formed about 12 to 13 billion years...

A parade of intense solar storms have hit Earth — the strongest since Halloween over 20 years ago. While these outbursts from the active sun can pose serious threats to our electrical grid and communications systems, they also stoke brilliant events in our polar skies, commonly called auroras or the northern lights. In particular, our...

This is not just another sublime image of the largest storm in the solar system, Jupiter‘s Great Red Spot.  Look closer… a little closer… Come on, you’re going to have to try harder than that. Get in there. Do you see it now? That’s not a speck of dust on NASA‘s Juno spacecraft camera. That’s...

Even on an Air Force base tarmac, a cicada landed on the president’s neck. The spectacular emergence of a double brood of cicadas in 2024, with some 1.5 million of the harmless insects emerging per acre in some places, will result in cicadas landing on people’s shirts, arms, hair, and…beyond — just as the impressive...

Astronomers discovered a truly tortured planet. It’ll make you thankful for Earth. In a distant solar system some 66 light-years away, researchers used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to spot a volcano-blanketed world new to science. It’s covered in volcanoes because the other two planets in this system have forced it into an unusual...

More kaleidoscopic light shows could be visible in the sky across the Northern Hemisphere as a powerful solar storm ramps up.  An extreme geomagnetic storm that first hit last week is expected to become more intense, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as several coronal mass ejections are due to bombard Earth’s...

Amid its period of peak activity, the sun is launching electromagnetic bombs at Earth, and all you can think of is gazing up at the northern lights? Good. You have your priorities in order, because nothing bad is likely to happen despite the recent solar flare eruptions. Here’s how to enjoy the show: According to...