Solar System
Eris Could be Slushier Than Pluto
In 2005, astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz announced the discovery of a previously unknown…
It Doesn’t Take Much to Get Tilted Planets
Chinese and Indian astronomers were the first to measure Earth's axial tilt accurately, and they did it about 3,000 years…
A Tiny Quadcopter Could Gather Rocks for China’s Sample Return Mission
Space exploration is always changing. Before February 2021 there had never been a human made craft flying around in the…
NASA is Getting the Plutonium it Needs for Future Missions
The Department of Energy just delivered a shipment plutonium that NASA will turn into radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for future…
Under Some Conditions, Comets Could Deliver Organic Molecules to Planets
New research shows how comets could deliver the building blocks for life in systems with close-orbiting planets, aiding in the…
JWST Observes the Kuiper Belt: Sedna, Gonggong, and Quaoar
Using data acquired by the JWST, an international team of planetary scientists have revealed new insights about some of the…
OSIRIS-REx Returned Carbon and Water from Asteroid Bennu
Carbon and water are so common on Earth that they're barely worth mentioning. But not if you're a scientist. They…
If Earth is Average, We Should Find Extraterrestrial Life Within 60 Light-Years
A new study estimates that there could be 11,000 habitable planets within 100 parsecs of our Sun, the nearest being…
The OSIRIS-REx Capsule Has Landed! Asteroid Samples Returned!
The samples obtained by NASA's OSIRIS-REx of the asteroid Bennu landed this morning and will be analyzed shortly!
Tiny Swarming Spacecraft Could Establish Communications with Proxima Centauri
New research from the Institute for Interstellar Studies explains how swarms of thousands of tiny spacecraft could maintain communications with…