Science

NASA’s Juno probe, exploring worlds hundreds of millions of miles away, has beamed back some of the closest-ever views of Io, the most volcanic land in our solar system. The recent Feb. 3 flyby passed just 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the lava-covered Io, illuminating many of this world’s features — and could answer big...

When a NASA contractor launches to the moon, a popular American clothing company will do its part to help the robotic lander bundle up for space and the frigid lunar south pole. Houston-based Intuitive Machines will blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, no earlier than Valentine’s Day, with a...

A revolutionary telescope will come online in 2025. And mounted to it will be a giant camera built to capture extraordinary views of space. The United States’ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is finishing the over 5.5-foot-tall, 6,200-pound (1.65-meter and 2,800-kilogram) LSST Camera, which will snap cosmic images at the much-anticipated Vera C. Rubin Observatory located...

A moon of Saturn that bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars‘ Death Star has been holding a secret — and it’s not the Galactic Empire’s favorite world-obliterating space weapon. Mimas, one of the planet’s 146 moons, most likely has an ocean brewing under its entire icy shell, according to new evidence recently published in...

NASA scientists studying the sun have detected an enormous group of darkened patches in the middle of the star that are visible from 92 million miles away on Earth. The splotches, known as sunspots, may look like mere specks on the solar surface from here, but they can actually be the size of whole planets,...

There aren’t any Martians around to watch eclipses on Mars. But there are robots. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover recently spotted the desert planet’s misshapen moon, Phobos, traversing the sun. The space agency’s car-sized robot used cameras atop its mast — which act like a crow’s nest aboard a ship — to capture the image below...

A pioneering NASA 747 aircraft outfitted with a big telescope was retired a couple years ago. But the mission is still making space discoveries. Scientists used data previously collected by the SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) endeavor to spot evidence of frozen water on two asteroids. It’s more evidence that water is pervasive in...

NASA is getting another crack at landing on the moon, after a Pittsburgh company it contracted failed to reach its destination and plunged back to Earth last month. This time it’s Houston-based Intuitive Machines at the proverbial wheel, though its Nova-C spacecraft, dubbed Odysseus, is robotic with no astronauts aboard. The mission launched at 1:05...

In our solar system’s proverbial “no man’s land,” a deep space realm beyond the planets, scientists detected unexpected activity. This remote area, inhabited by ice-clad worlds like Pluto (a dwarf planet), is called the Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped region surrounding much of our solar system. It’s a relatively little known place, but millions of frozen,...

After months struggling to open NASA‘s asteroid sample canister, agency scientists finally know how much dust and rock its spacecraft brought back to Earth. Despite earlier estimates that it scooped about a cup of material from Bennu, an ancient space rock the length of the Empire State Building, the total weight of the sample is...