Space & Time

One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA's return to the Red…

A recent NASA mission to the dwarf planet Ceres found brilliant, white spots of salts on its surface. New research led by The University of Texas at Austin in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) delved into the factors…

A study published last year in the journal Science suggested liquid water is present beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars. Now, a new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters argues there needs to be an underground source of…

The Earth's magnetic shield booms like a drum when it is hit by strong impulses, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London. As an impulse strikes the outer boundary of the shield, known as the magnetopause, ripples…

The heaviest vehicle to successfully land on Mars is the Curiosity Rover at 1 metric ton, about 2,200 pounds. Sending more ambitious robotic missions to the surface of Mars, and eventually humans, will require landed payload masses in the…

On Jan. 30 2019, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) acquired a spectacular limb shot centered on the Chang'e 4 landing site, looking across the floor of Von Kármán crater. At the time, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was more…

Auroras, also known as Northern or Southern lights depending on whether they occur near the North or South Pole, are natural displays of light in the Earth's sky. Typically these lights are dimly present at night. However, sometimes these…

Casual stargazers may look at the black area among stars and think that there's nothing there except empty space. But the night sky hides many secrets invisible to the naked eye. Less than a year into its mission, a sky-survey camera in…

A new analysis has revealed that advanced satellite-based instrument capabilities are needed for global monitoring of microscopic particles, or aerosols, in the stratospheric layer of the atmosphere. Aerosols in the stratosphere -- located…

A team of astronomers and chemists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has detected the chemical fingerprints of sodium chloride (NaCl) and other similar salty compounds emanating from the dusty disk surrounding…