The year ahead in science

Some serious groundwork has been laid. Some amazing instruments are turning on. Some incredible destinations are in sight. If you ask us, 2015 is going to be an awesome year in science.

10 cool things we learned about Pluto from New Horizons

Five years ago today, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made history. After a voyage of nearly 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, the intrepid piano-sized probe flew within 7,800 miles of Pluto. For the first time ever, ...

A brief history of nukes in space

In just a few short weeks, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will make its historic flyby of Pluto and its moons. Solar panels are unable to operate in the dim nether regions of the outer solar system, and instead, New Horizons ...

Pluto's hydrocarbon haze keeps dwarf planet colder than expected

The gas composition of a planet's atmosphere generally determines how much heat gets trapped in the atmosphere. For the dwarf planet Pluto, however, the predicted temperature based on the composition of its atmosphere was ...

What flows on Pluto?

It's now been over a month since the New Horizons spacecraft flew by one of the last unknown outposts of our solar system and although we've only just seen a trickle of the data it collected, it has all been rather exciting. ...

Watch Pluto and Charon engage in their orbital dance

Now here's something I guarantee you've never seen before: a video of the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon showing the two distinctly separate worlds actually in motion around each other! Captured by the steadily-approaching ...

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