Looking Out for ‘Lookout Hill’

Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter … Read more

SpaceCom Column: The Promise and Peril of Jared Isaacman

This is a customer submitted press release. Submit your press release. Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA Administrator sparks excitement and questions. A billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut, he brings unmatched expertise in spaceflight and business. Yet, his ties to SpaceX and challenges like the SLS program and lunar ambitions loom large. Can he revolutionize NASA … Read more

Cosmic rays may complicate the quest to find life on Mars

On Mars, some of the most likely places to look for traces of ancient life may also be the least likely to preserve those traces. This is the result of a recent study that simulated exposing important building blocks of life called “lipids” to cosmic rays pummeling the surface of Mars. And, in short, the … Read more

NASA tests high-tech software for future mission to search for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa

Artificial intelligence is being developed to provide a robotic brain for a future NASA mission to land on the icy surface of one of the solar system’s ocean moons, such as Europa or Enceladus. The autonomous software is being developed by teams of researchers who are making use of a robotic arm, mimicking that belonging … Read more

‘Dune: Prophecy:’ ‘Twice Born:’ Plans go awry, people die, and what’s behind those blue eyes?

Fill a glass of spiked eggnog as we streak toward the finish line of “Dune: Prophecy!” The cold stone walls of the Harkonnen brood’s gothic apartment on Salusa Secundus are a bit more accommodating than the smell of furry leviathan flesh inside their bleak hovel on the chilly planet of Lankiveil many decades earlier, and … Read more

Sols 4386-4388: Powers of Ten

Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun … Read more

Webb Sees a Supercluster of Galaxies Coming Together

As a species, we’ve come to the awareness that we’re a minuscule part of a vast Universe defined by galaxy superclusters and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Driven by a healthy intellectual curiosity, we’re examining our surroundings and facing the question posed by Nature: how did everything get this way? We only have incremental … Read more

Hubble Gets its Best Look At the First Quasar

The term quasar comes from quasi-stellar objects, a name that reflected our uncertainty about their nature. The first quasars were discovered solely because of their radio emissions, with no corresponding visual objects. This is surprising since quasars blaze with the light of trillions of stars. In recent observations, the Hubble examined a historical quasar named … Read more

Not all stars with black hole companions die gruesome deaths, scientists say

Death by black hole isn’t always inevitable for stars that exist in binary systems with one of these cosmic titans. There may be a way for small stars in such systems to dodge their expected fates: violent supernovas that end in the creation of another black hole. This expected mechanism is also believed to turn … Read more