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Could Venus host life? The Venus life equation can help us find out

What drives us to send probes throughout the solar system and rovers and landers to Mars? It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy. It’s because we live inside a big, natural puzzle, and we want to understand it. That’s one reason. But the main reason for space exploration is to search for life beyond Earth. […]

How NASA’s Perseverance is helping prepare astronauts for Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to help scientists understand the planet’s climate and geography. But another key objective is to pave the way for human exploration of Mars, and as part of that effort, the rover carries a set of five spacesuit material […]

Fluorescent caves could explain how life persists in extraterrestrial environments

Deep below Earth’s surface, rock and mineral formations lay hidden with a secret brilliance. Under a black light, the chemicals fossilized within shine in brilliant hues of pink, blue and green. Scientists are using these fluorescent features to understand how the caves formed and how life is supported in extreme environments, which may reveal how […]

SpaceX launches classified NROL-69 mission from Cape Canaveral

SpaceX sent up a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office from the Space Coast on Monday afternoon.

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Image: Hubble captures the Small Magellanic Cloud

Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a scene from one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away. Most of the galaxy resides in the constellation Tucana, but a […]

Astronomers provide insights into the hot gaseous halo of galaxy NGC 7793

Using Spektr-RG and Chandra space observatories, Chinese astronomers have investigated a nearby spiral galaxy known as NGC 7793. Results of the new study, published March 13 on the arXiv preprint server, deliver important insights into the properties of the galaxy’s hot gaseous halo.

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Why can’t physicists decide if warp drives are real?

In the years since Miguel Alcubierre came up with a warp drive solution in 1994, you would occasionally see news headlines saying that warp drives can work. And then a few months later you’ll see that they’ve been ruled out. And then after that you’ll see that warp drives kind of work, but only in […]

We’re one step closer to a giant interferometer on the moon

What’s on and in a star? What happens in an active galactic nucleus? Answering those questions is the goal of a proposed giant interferometer on the moon. It’s called the Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI) and would deploy a series of 15–30 optical/ultraviolet-sensitive telescopes in a 1-km elliptical array across the lunar surface.

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Webb unmasks true nature of the ‘Cosmic Tornado’ spiral galaxy

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy. Due to the close proximity of this Herbig-Haro object to Earth, this new composite infrared image of the outflow from a young star allows researchers to examine […]

What rules actually prohibit us from building a warp drive?

In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre was able to construct a valid solution to the equations of general relativity that enable a warp drive. But now we need to tackle the rest of relativity: How do we arrange matter and energy to make that particular configuration of spacetime possible?

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Organic molecules of unprecedented size discovered on Mars

The longest organic molecules identified to date on Mars have recently been detected by scientists from the CNRS, together with their colleagues from France, the U.S., Mexico, and Spain. These long carbon chains, containing up to 12 consecutive carbon atoms, could exhibit features similar to the fatty acids produced on Earth by biological activity.

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Asteroid 2024 YR may not hit Earth in 2032, but it—and others—will keep coming back

In late 2024, astronomers spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 on a trajectory that could potentially threaten Earth. This observation triggered a fervid series of observations of the object—possibly as big as a football field—to determine that it will not hit. However, an impact on the moon cannot be ruled out.

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Using algorithms to help find life on icy ocean worlds

Scientists have long thought that our solar system’s ocean worlds, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, may harbor extraterrestrial life in the form of microbes. But detecting it could be a challenge because missions to ocean worlds have relied on probes, not landers.

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Scalable nanotechnology-based lightsails developed for next-generation space exploration

Researchers at TU Delft and Brown University have developed scalable nanotechnology-based lightsails that could support future advances in space exploration and experimental physics. Their research, published in Nature Communications, introduces new materials and production methods to create the thinnest large-scale reflectors ever made.

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Chang’e-6 samples suggest 4.25-billion-year-old impact formed moon’s South Pole–Aitken basin

Scientists have long sought to determine the age of the moon’s South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest known impact crater on the lunar surface. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Chen Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has dated the formation of the basin […]