Space Exploration

A Partial Supernova Flung This White Dwarf Across the Milky Way Image credit: Sephirohq (CC BY SA 3.0) Supernovas, by their nature, often don’t leave a lot of star behind for astronomers to later peruse. Many of these titanic explosions result in the formation of a black hole or a …

  Earth’s only natural satellite formed 4.425 billion years ago — around 85 million years later than previous estimates, according to a new modeling study by researchers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technische Universität Berlin and the Institut für Planetologie at the University of Münster. When the Moon …

Planet Orbits 100,000 Times Faster We live in a solar system of eight planets, none of which collide with each other, which is nice for us. How often do planets in other solar systems smash into each other, though? A new AI designed by Princeton researchers can crunch the numbers …

‘Planet Nine’ Might Be an Ancient Black Hole We tend to think of the solar system as our little corner of the universe, but there are still a lot of things we don’t know about it. For example, what’s perturbing the orbits of small space rocks out past the orbit …

NASA Mounts Perseverance Mars Rover on Atlas V Rocket It’s been a long road, but NASA’s Perseverance rover is ready for its trip to Mars. The agency packaged the robot up inside its payload fairing and attached it to an Atlas V rocket this week. Now, all we need is …

NASA Will ‘Pause’ Attempts to Deploy InSight’s Heat Probe on Mars The InSight lander has been trying to deploy its heat probe instrument for months, but it’s going to take a break. This probe was supposed to dig down to take the planet’s temperature, but NASA has only made progress …

Scientists Might Have Found the Moon’s Missing Metal Scientists studying the moon have long puzzled over the low metal content of Earth’s satellite. After all, if the moon formed from fragments of Earth, shouldn’t it have similar metal content? NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) might finally have found an explanation …

New Oval-Shaped Feature Spotted on Jupiter: Clyde’s Spot An astronomer from South Africa has discovered a new ‘white oval’ in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant Jupiter. Jupiter as captured by Clyde Foster’s telescope, and Juno’s approximate trajectory as it zoomed close by the planet, traveling from north to …

NASA Is Running Out of Time to Launch Perseverance Rover After Latest Delay Curiosity has been exploring Mars for years, and NASA has been planning its successor for almost as long. The Perseverance rover is nearly complete, but NASA has been forced to delay the launch yet again. The rover …

Astronomers Have Discovered the First Exposed Planetary Core Most of what we know about planetary cores is conjecture, on account of the fact that we live on top of ours and have extremely limited access to all of the others. Since none of the planets whizzing around our own star …