Space

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 …

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 …

SpaceX is about to send its human spacecraft farther than ever before in space, and it will do it with a crew of four civilians. During the five-day Polaris Dawn mission, the Crew Dragon capsule is expected to reach its highest-ever orbit of 435 miles above Earth. That’s about 185 …

Sometimes, planets go rogue. Scientists used the powerful James Webb Space Telescope to spot six of these rogue objects, which move through the cosmos untethered from any solar system. They’re a little bigger than the gas giant Jupiter, and the discovery suggests these worlds formed similar to the way stars …

Have you ever had an eight-day road trip turn into an eight-month excursion? Nope? Well, consider yourself fortunate that you’re not one of the astronauts currently stranded in space. The two astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who blasted to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Boeing Starliner are …

Our Milky Way galaxy is a cannibal. It has grown by consuming other galaxies. Yet, it too, may be destined to collide and merge with an even bigger galaxy: Andromeda. Though galaxy collisions are normal events and NASA suspects this collision is inevitable (in billions of years), new research argues …

During a solar storm, the sun unleashes a torrent of radiation into space. If you’re on Earth, the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field shield you against the most harmful health impacts. But if you were on Mars some 140 million miles away, how those gusts of energy would affect you …

Some 430 light-years from Earth lies our stalwart cosmic beacon, the North Star. Except this star is actually volatile. It’s pulsating as it constantly grows and shrinks. And a new unprecedented image of the hot ball of gas reveals it’s covered in large spots. In research published by The Astrophysical …

A car-sized NASA rover, weighing over a ton, will scale a crater wall. The space agency announced that its robotic Perseverance mission, now looking for hints of past life on Mars, is embarking on the next phase of Martian exploration. But first, it must climb out of the Jezero Crater, …

Mercury is a little-known, still mysterious world. But one thing is certain. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, can’t actually travel backward in retrograde, and doesn’t impact us on Earth. The notion of Mercury retrograde, a common reference in astrology wherein communication and travel are temporarily impaired, can, of …