News

In September 2006, the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology-1 (SMART-1) successfully ended its three-year Moon-orbiting mission by hurling itself into the lunar surface. The planned crash was meant to...

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the hottest topics in astronomy right now. These short but extremely powerful bursts last only milliseconds, but release tremendous amounts of energy during that minute period of time. Since publication of their in...

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has been a jumping-off point to our understanding of galaxies throughout the universe. And though our picture of that home galaxy has evolved over time as astronomers have developed better ways to catalog and map its c...

Dust devils are whirlwinds that range from small surface disturbances to towering columns of dust. They occur in several locations on Earth, but our planet isn’t the only place in the solar system where these storms can be found — dust de...

We would not be here without Earth’s resources. The magnetic field that shields us from space radiation, the atmosphere we breathe and the water we drink are but a few of the crucial resources we rely on, kindly provided by our planet. Just b...

Just shy of 20 years ago, the Cassini craft set out for Saturn. Today, it was intentionally destroyed in Saturn’s atmosphere to preserve two potentially habitable moons. The October 15, 1997, launch marked a continuation of the Pioneer and Vo...

After 13 years and hundreds of orbits around Saturn, Cassini is in its final fall towards the gas giant. Before the dawn breaks tomorrow, the spacecraft will be vaporized. Now, we reflect on Cassini’s many triumphs, and stand vigil to witness t...

It’s a big week for NASA, with the Cassini spacecraft set to end its mission this Friday. But although one milestone mission is ending, another remains on its way to making history. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is awake — tempor...

The Cassini probe has given us a spectacular view of the Saturn system over the 13 years it’s been there. In that time, it’s opened up untold wonders of our second-largest planet and its 62 spectacular moons. Here are a few big-to-small n...

Don’t be too alarmed, but just as we can detect planets from Earth, beings on other planets could detect us with technology roughly on par with our own. Spooooooooky. But before you get worried about invasion, just remember: our modern tech...

Discovered in 1781, Uranus is an ice giant orbiting our Sun once every 84 Earth years. This mysterious world, which appears as just a tiny dot in most amateur telescopes, not only possesses a system of thin, faint rings, but also 27 moons (by our cur...