Lucy spacecraft eyeballs next target in exciting new images

A moving image shows one light among dimmer lights jumping from one position to another.

The Lucy spacecraft, en route to the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, first has its sights set on a main-belt asteroid, Donaldjohanson. NASA shared this view of the targeted asteroid on February 25, 2025. Image via NASA/ Goddard/ SwRI/ Johns Hopkins APL. Lucy sees its next target The Lucy spacecraft – named for a famous fossilized … Read more

Perseverance Takes A Second Look At Some Ancient Rocks

This image shows Perseverance's landing ellipse (green circle) and the different regions in the Jezero Crater. The rover is currently exploring the crater rim, shown in purple. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/University of Arizona

A planet’s history is told in its ancient rock. Earth’s oldest rocks are in the Canadian Shield, Australia’s Jack Hill, the Greenstone Belts in Greenland, and a handful of other locations. These rocks hold powerful clues to our planet’s history. On Mars, the same holds true. That’s why NASA’s Perseverance rover is revisiting some of … Read more

See Mercury at its best in the night sky over the next 2 weeks

Celestron NexStar 4SE telescope on a white background

We now have a fine opportunity to view the planet that many astronomy guide books refer to as the most difficult of the naked-eye planets to see. The planet in question is Mercury. Beginning now and running through the end of the second week of March, this somewhat overgrown version of the moon will have … Read more

NASA Stennis Flashback: Learning About Rocket Engine Smoke for Safe Space Travel

joe schuyler

NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, is widely known as the nation’s largest rocket propulsion test site. More than 35 years ago, it also served as a hands-on classroom for NASA engineers seeking to improve the efficiency of space shuttle main engines. From 1988 to the mid-1990’s, NASA Stennis engineers operated a … Read more

Sampling Enceladus’ Subsurface Ocean with TIGRE Mission Concept

How can we explore Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, to include its surface and subsurface ocean, with the goal of potentially discovering life as we know it? This is what a recent study presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2024 Fall Meeting hopes to address as a team of students and researchers proposed the Thermal Investigation … Read more

Gravitational waves might exhibit quantum properties

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Galaxies, planets, black holes: to most people, everything about our Universe sounds and feels enormous. But while it’s true that much of what happens millions of light years away is large, there are also processes happening at the quantum end of the scale. That’s the branch of science which explains how nature works at very … Read more

Strange Winds Blow Through this Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

An artist impression of Tylos, also known as WASP-121 b. Image Courtesy: NASA, ESA, Q. Changeat et al., M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble

Some exoplanets have characteristics totally alien to our Solar System. Hot Jupiters are one such type. They can have orbital periods of less than 10 days and surface temperatures that can climb to well over 4,000 K (3,730 °C or 6,740 °F). Unlike any planets in our system, they’re usually tidally locked. Astronomers probed the … Read more

Boost for alien hunters? Earth life may not be so improbable, study suggests

The concept of the “great filter” to explain why so far we seem to be alone in the universe is based on erroneous assumptions, according to a new model that describes how life on Earth evolved in step with changing geobiological conditions rather than through a series of improbable events. “We’re arguing that intelligent life … Read more

Fluffy Molecular Clouds Formed Stars in the Early Universe

This image from the research shows the overall view of the SMC and the positions of the target YSOs. Image Credit: Tokuda et al. 2025.

Stars form in Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), vast clouds of mostly hydrogen that can span tens of light years. These stellar nurseries can form thousands of stars. Astronomers know this because they observe these regions in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds and watch as stars take shape. But the Universe is more than … Read more

Underwater detector spots the most energetic neutrino yet

KM3NeT detector

KM3NeT is a neutrino telescope consisting of strings of optical detectors placed deep beneath the ocean. Credit: KM3NeT On Feb. 13, 2023, something extraordinary happened deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea. KM3NeT’s Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss (ARCA) telescope, a sprawling underwater array of ultra-sensitive photodetectors, caught sight of the telltale sign of an … Read more