To quote NASA associate administrator Jim Reuter, sending crewed missions to Mars by 2040 is an "audacious goal." The challenges include the distance involved, which can take up to six months to traverse using conventional ...
Space Exploration
Feb 27, 2024
0
48
A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar disk. My colleagues and I have used computer simulations to show that newborn gas planets in these disks are likely to have ...
Astronomy
Feb 17, 2024
1
41
With less than nine months remaining in the countdown to launch, NASA's Europa Clipper mission has passed a major milestone: Its science instruments have been added to the massive spacecraft, which is being assembled at the ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 30, 2024
0
19
A team of researchers has examined the Winchcombe meteorite and demonstrated the existence in it of nitrogen compounds such as amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons—without applying any chemical treatment and by using ...
Astrobiology
Jan 29, 2024
0
32
Though natural fertilizers made from treated sewage sludge are used to reintroduce nutrients onto agricultural fields, they bring along microplastic pollutants too. And according to a small-scale study published in Environmental ...
Environment
Jan 17, 2024
1
46
Scientists and engineers at the CU Boulder will soon take part in an effort to collect a bit of stardust—the tiny bits of matter that flow through the Milky Way Galaxy and were once the initial building blocks of our solar ...
Space Exploration
Jan 12, 2024
0
1
When we look at the moon, either through a pair of binoculars, a telescope, or past footage from the Apollo missions, we see a landscape that's riddled with what appear to be massive sinkholes. But these "sinkholes" aren't ...
Astrobiology
Jan 11, 2024
0
6
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest smashed into Earth, killing off three quarters of all life on the planet—including the dinosaurs.
Earth Sciences
Oct 30, 2023
0
302
The air was dry and warm and the skies over Dushanbe were gray without a hint of sun during another recent toxic sand storm that enveloped the capital of Tajikistan.
Environment
Oct 8, 2023
0
88
Humans have contended with dust storms for thousands of years, ever since early civilizations appeared in the Middle East and North Africa. But modern desert dust storms are different from their preindustrial counterparts.
Earth Sciences
Sep 18, 2023
0
0
