When spacecraft return to Earth, they don't need to shed all their velocity by firing retro-rockets. Instead, they use the atmosphere as a brake to slow down for a soft landing. Every planet in the solar system except Mercury ...
Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole ...
A little more than a year ago, a NASA flight test article came screaming back from space at more than 18,000 mph, reaching temperatures of nearly 2,700°F before gently splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. At that moment, ...
It's been 30 years since a group of scientists led by Carl Sagan found evidence for life on Earth using data from instruments on board the Nasa Galileo robotic spacecraft. Yes, you read that correctly. Among his many pearls ...
To safeguard Earth's biosphere, scientists have turned toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the hope that it may help to protect biodiversity. Yet this hope has been challenged by AI's appetite for water and energy rooted ...
When I was a college student, I worked at the Charlevoix Astronomical Observatory in Québec.
Dunes, the mounds of sand formed by the wind that vary from ripples on the beach to towering behemoths in the desert, are incarnations of surface processes, climate change, and the surrounding atmosphere. For decades, scientists ...
Flying cars. Space tourism. Safe reentry for astronauts coming back from Mars.
Although technically challenging, space experiments are a scientifically important aspect of astrobiology and astrochemistry investigations. The international space station (ISS) offers an excellent example of a long-term ...
,We all used to think there were nine planets. But in 2006, the solar system was left with only eight planets, when Pluto was no longer classified as such. But is it still possible there is a planet out there beyond Neptune—possibly ...
