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In 10 to 50 years, spaceflight might take us to the surface of the Red Planet, to the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet and beyond. But, according to a group of experts, this future will depend on international collaboration, determination, and increasing access to space for people around the world.   This Pi Day (Thursday, […]

 The eccentric orbit of the Martian moon Phobos could drive the flow of powder across the moon’s surface, a new study finds, shedding light on Phobos’ mysterious origins. Dark gray, potato-shaped Phobos is only about 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) wide, but it is by far the larger of Mars’ two moons, at more than seven […]

SpaceX plans to launch the first commercial mission of its Falcon Heavy megarocket early next month, according to media reports. The company is targeting April 7 for the launch of the Arabsat 6A communications satellite from historic Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, CNBC reported Friday (March 15), citing anonymous sources. SpaceX […]

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — SpaceX could begin initial tests of a prototype of the company’s next-generation Starship vehicle as soon as this week, Elon Musk said March 17. In a series of tweets, Musk said flights of a “hopper” test vehicle, powered by a single Raptor engine, would “hopefully” begin this week pending work to […]

On March 18, 1980, a Soviet rocket exploded on the launchpad and killed 48 people.  The Vostok-2M rocket was about to launch a new spy satellite called Tselina-D. Military technicians were working to fuel the rocket on the launchpad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a top-secret spaceport a few hundred miles north of Moscow.  It wasn’t […]

The early Earth was an infernal place: hot, roiling, rapidly rotating and bombarded by space debris, including a Mars-size body whose impact created the moon. That same impact also turned the entire surface of the newly formed Earth into a molten magma ocean. Now, new research finds that the rapid spin of the planet may […]

Wednesday (March 20) brings us the first full moon of the new spring season. The official moment that the moon will turn full is 9:43 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Just 3 hours and 45 minutes earlier, the vernal equinox — the official start of astronomical spring — will occur.  The first full moon of spring […]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The technological utopias of science fiction may still be centuries away, but building the culture of that future starts now, a trio of sci-fi creators said.  On a panel at the Beyond the Cradle conference on March 14, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, science fiction creators Ytasha Womack, Daniel […]

Time goes in one direction: forward. Little boys become old men but not vice versa; teacups shatter but never spontaneously reassemble. This cruel and immutable property of the universe, called the “arrow of time,” is fundamentally a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that systems will always tend to become more disordered […]

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of “Ask a Spaceman“ and “Space Radio,” and author of “Your Place in the Universe” (Prometheus Books, 2018). Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. In 1808, chemist John Dalton developed a very persuasive argument that led to an amazing […]

White-armored Stormtroopers in the “Star Wars” movies are practically identical and nearly impossible to tell apart. That uncanny similarity recently inspired a team of scientists who had discovered a new spider genus; the arachnids were so alike each other in size and markings that the researchers named them after the helmeted troops, calling the creatures […]

What is the closest planet to Earth? The answer most people would give is Venus. But … it might actually be Mercury. Although Venus is the planet that comes closest to Earth as it sweeps by on its orbit, Mercury stays the closest to Earth the longest, according to a commentary published Tuesday (March 12) […]

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “skyscapes” that connect Earth and the night sky. Join Miguel […]

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe. Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. We don’t understand the concept of time much at all.  Everyone experiences time — literally every day — […]

The $8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope may be the last big-budget observatory that NASA launches for a while. The White House’s proposed 2020 budget cancels the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a $3.2 billion space mission viewed as a linchpin of astrophysics research through the 2020s and beyond.  And that budget keeps NASA’s astrophysics […]

Rovers, no matter what world they’re designed to explore, tend to be designed like little cars, equipped with wheels that spin on fixed axles. But that can leave the vehicles vulnerable to getting stuck, as Spirit infamously did on Mars. That’s why engineers are exploring new ways for rovers to move on the moon, Mars […]

As the young universe settled into its current form, flip-flopping hydrogen atoms fired off countless flashes of light — all at the same wavelength of about half the height of a bowling pin. Eons later, those photons have been stretched to varying lengths by the expanding cosmos and some have found their way to Canada, […]

There’s a point in space that’s 50,000 times as bright as our sun — the signature of a massive star. Scientists already knew about it and named it PDS 27. But it turns out, the dot of light scientists were calling PDS 27 is actually two stars, PDS 27 and its stellar companion, PDS 37. […]

To mark the three-year anniversary of the Trace Gas Orbiter’s arrival at Mars, the European Space Agency (ESA) has released a stunning image it captured earlier this month of NASA’s InSight lander. InSight touched down on Mars on Nov. 26 and has been at work ever since deploying its instruments and beginning to gather data. […]