On October 30th, 2018, after nine years of faithful service, the Kepler Space Telescope was officially retired. With nearly 4000 candidates and 2,662 confirmed exoplanets to its credit, no other telescope has managed to teach ...
There's no two-ways about it, the Universe is an extremely big place! And thanks to the limitations placed upon us by Special Relativity, traveling to even the closest star systems could take millennia. As we addressed in ...
Since it was first detected hurling through our solar system, the interstellar object known as 'Oumuamua has been a source of immense scientific interest. Aside from being extrasolar in origin, the fact that it has managed ...
Since they were first observed in the 1970s by the Viking missions, the slope streaks that periodically appear along slopes on Mars have continued to intrigue scientists. After years of study, scientists still aren't sure ...
When exploring other planets and celestial bodies, NASA missions are required to abide by the practice known as "planetary protection." This practice states that measures must be taken during the designing of a mission to ...
William Langland likely wouldn't know what to make of the latest way people are reading his poetry. In part, that's because Langland died in 1386. But it's also because his most famous work, Piers Plowman, is the subject ...
In recent years, the number of extra-solar planets discovered around nearby M-type (red dwarf stars) has grown considerably. In many cases, these confirmed planets have been "Earth-like," meaning that they are terrestrial ...
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) accomplished a historic feat last week (Thurs. Jan. 3rd) by landing a robotic mission on the "dark side" of the moon. Known as the Chang'e-4 mission, this lander-rover combination ...
In 2003, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Center made the first-ever detection of trace amounts of methane in Mars' atmosphere, a find which was confirmed a year later by the ESA's Mars Express orbiter. In December of ...
The dream of traveling to another star system, and maybe even finding populated worlds there, is one that has preoccupied humanity for many generations. But it was not until the era of space exploration that scientists have ...
