CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The private Athena lunar lander is on its way to the moon. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off shortly after sunset this evening (Feb. 26), carrying Athena and NASA’s ride-along Lunar Trailblazer orbiter aloft against a darkening sky here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Athena — which was built … Read more
Life as we know it needs water, but life as we don’t know it may run on concentrated sulfuric acid. The chemistry of life as we know it wouldn’t work in a place like the huge Saturn moon Titan, where it’s so cold that ice behaves more like rock, or in the acidic clouds of … Read more
As far as we can tell, life needs water. Cells can’t perform their functions without it. Some have suggested that other exotic liquids, like liquid methane, could do the job on worlds like Saturn’s moon Titan. That idea is highly speculative, though. So, it makes sense that NASA is launching a spacecraft dedicated to the … Read more
This is a mobula ray. Many species of sharks and rays can jump out of the water. But, why do they do it? Image via Nico Marín/ Pexels. Leaping out of the water requires significant energy. This suggests breaching serves an important function. Sharks and rays leap out of the water for several reasons, such … Read more
Roughly 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun was born from the gas and dust of a nebula that underwent gravitational collapse. The remaining gas and dust settled into a protoplanetary disk that slowly accreted to form the planets, including Earth. About 4.5 billion years ago, our planet was impacted by a Mars-sized body (Theia), which … Read more
View larger. | An example of weird, dark streaks called recurring slope lineae on the slopes of Mars’ Horowitz crater. Do liquid water brines form these streaks? A new study suggested brines on Mars are less likely to occur than scientists thought. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona. 2025 EarthSky lunar calendar is available … Read more