What's important to know about planet Mercury?

Close by the Sun is Mercury, a practically atmosphere-like world that has a lot of craters. Until NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft arrived there in 2008, we knew very little about the planet—only part of it had been imaged! ...

A new era of spaceflight? Promising advances in rocket propulsion

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.

Voyager 1 may have left the solar system

While there's no official word from NASA on this, the buzz around the blogosphere is that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System. The evidence comes from this graph, above, which shows the number of particles, mainly protons, ...

Scientists discover stardust in Antarctic snow

A team of scientists hauled 500 kilograms of fresh snow back from Antarctica, melted it, and sifted through the particles that remained. Their analysis yielded a surprise: The snow held significant amounts of a form of iron ...

Researchers develop new method to remove dust on solar panels

Taking a cue from the self-cleaning properties of the lotus leaf, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have shed new light on microscopic forces and mechanisms that can be optimized to remove dust from solar ...

Strong solar flare erupts from sun

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, peaking at 9:55 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event.

page 1 from 40