Astronauts are to test the world's first space mining devices, in an advance that could open up a new frontier in exploring the universe.
Space Exploration
Jul 29, 2019
0
20
For centuries, people have done the hard work of mining useful minerals and metals from solid rock. Then, scientists learned how to harness the power of tiny microbes to do some of this labor. This process, called biomining, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 24, 2019
2
344
Exhibit 0102.226 may look like just a rock, but this dark and patchy mass is actually a piece of Mars, ejected when an asteroid or comet struck the Red Planet and sent chunks flying towards Earth.
Space Exploration
Jul 12, 2019
1
0
Observers watching January's total eclipse of the Moon saw a rare event, a short-lived flash as a meteorite hit the lunar surface. Spanish astronomers now think the space rock collided with the Moon at 61,000 kilometres an ...
Space Exploration
Apr 30, 2019
14
919
Here's a hypothetical: a telescope detects an asteroid between 100 and 300 meters in diameter racing through our solar system at 14 kilometers per second, 57 million kilometers from Earth.
Space Exploration
Apr 30, 2019
15
371
This fluorescent work of art captures the beauty of biofilms, or the growth of microbes on rocks. In this microscopic image, Sphingomonas desiccabilis is growing on basalt.
Space Exploration
Mar 20, 2019
0
11
Oxygen in the form of the oxygen molecule (O2), produced by plants and vital for animals, is thankfully abundant in Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Researchers studying the history of O2 on Earth, however, know that it was ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 25, 2019
2
87
A team of scientists, astronomers and engineers meets weekly in a conference room on a Howard County, Md., research campus and plans to save the world.
Space Exploration
Feb 8, 2019
17
381
NASA's first look at a tiny asteroid shows the space rock is more moist and studded with boulders than originally thought.
Space Exploration
Dec 11, 2018
2
42
After a two-year chase, a NASA spacecraft arrived Monday at the ancient asteroid Bennu, its first visitor in billions of years.
Space Exploration
Dec 3, 2018
1
744
