Last year, astronomers detected the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2024 YR4 that orbits the Sun every four years and periodically crosses Earth’s orbit. The nature of its orbit makes it a Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO), meaning it could pose a collision risk with Earth someday. Recently, refined estimates of its orbit have ruled out the possibility … Read more
The MAPP rover will hold three of MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative’s payloads. (Credit: Lunar Outpost) Editor’s note: This article was first published March 29, 2024, and has been updated. After becoming the first commercial operator to land a spacecraft on the Moon last year, Intuitive Machines is preparing its follow-up mission, IM-2, for launch later … Read more
Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander stands on the lunar surface in this illustration after its arrival at the ridge near Shackleton crater. Credit: Intuitive Machines UPDATE Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025: Intuitive Machines and SpaceX are targeting a launch for IM-2 this evening. The Kennedy Space Center’s website lists a scheduled launch time no earlier than 7:17 … Read more
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
Neil Armstrong was appreciative, but as explained in his handwritten letter, it was too late. The Apollo 11 commander and his crewmates had already arrived at a design to represent the first moon landing. Armstrong’s note and the mission patch proposal that inspired it are up for auction in Goldberg Coins & Collectibles’ Feb. 27 … Read more
On Nov. 14, 2024, the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences marked the successful completion of SIRIUS-23, a year-long biomedical isolation experiment simulating the conditions of deep-space travel and lunar surface operations. For 366 days, a crew of six analog astronauts lived and worked in a sealed environment, a meticulously … Read more
WASHINGTON — In a mission veiled in secrecy, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Dec. 16 at 7:52 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, sending a military Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite to a medium orbit about 12,000 miles above Earth. Named Rapid Response Trailblazer-1 (RRT-1), this mission was a U.S. … Read more
Currently, 5,788 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,326 star systems, while thousands more candidates await confirmation. So far, the vast majority of these planets have been gas giants (3,826) or Super-Earths (1,735), while only 210 have been “Earth-like” – meaning rocky planets similar in size and mass to Earth. What’s more, the majority of these … Read more
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
Telescopes in space have a huge advantage over those on the ground: they can see the universe more clearly. The Earth’s atmosphere, weather conditions, and low-flying satellites don’t obscure their view. But space telescopes have a disadvantage too. They can’t be repaired, at least not since NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. But next-generation … Read more