Astronomers reveal how passing stars and exploding giants shaped our early solar system
Nearly 4.5 million years ago, two enormous, blazing stars swung close to the solar system. They did not…
Voyager 2 Caught Uranus on a Bad Weather Day in 1986, Study Finds
When Voyager 2 made its historic flyby of Uranus in 1986, the spacecraft captured the best data humanity…
NASA Selects 2 Instruments for Artemis IV Lunar Surface Science
NASA has selected two science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during…
Scientists discover 16 giant river networks on ancient Mars where life could have thrived
Long before Mars turned into the frozen desert you see today, water shaped its surface in dramatic ways.…
Mysterious structures within Earth’s mantle may explain why we exist
Far below your feet, nearly 1,800 miles beneath oceans and continents, Earth carries two massive scars from its…
How one image taken from 3.7 billion miles away proved Earth is a speck in space
Voyager 1’s photographs included Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus. According to NASA’s website, ‘Mars was obscured by…
Chang’e-6 samples show ancient lunar impacts left rust on the Moon
For more than half a century, scientists pictured the Moon as an almost fully reduced world where iron…
Underground water in Martian dunes points to hidden habitable zones
Late in the story of Mars, long after its lakes and rivers had faded, something quiet still moved…
Saturn’s icy moon may host a stable ocean fit for life
For years, Saturn’s small icy moon Enceladus has drawn attention for the erupting jets at its south pole.…
Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is burning much hotter than expected
Jupiter’s volcanic moon has always felt like a place that tests your sense of what a world can…
Earth’s magnetic field flipped wildly 565 million years ago and life changed forever
Long before life thrived in Earth’s oceans, the planet’s magnetic field became disorganized. Deep within the ancient rocks…
NASA’s James Webb Telescope maps 400-light-year-distant planet in 3D, revealing heat so extreme it breaks water apart
An artistic depiction of the WASP-18b exoplanet (Image source: NASA) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the…