Icy gas clouds found in deep space between stars are believed to be the birthplace of planets and solar systems. Scientists want to know what these clouds are made of,… Read more
As Arctic tundra has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet in… Read more
In anticipation of sending humans to Mars by 2033, NASA scientists are searching for suitable locations to land on the Red Planet. Ideally, these potential landing sites would have high scientific value for exploration while offering natural resources to sustain human life.… Read more
Scientists have discovered nearly all “extinction-scale” Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs (asteroids larger than 1 kilometer in diameter) and determined they pose no risk of impact in the near future. But there are still thousands of smaller NEOs that pose a potential danger.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) coordinates the detection… Read more
When 51 Pegasi b was the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star discovered outside our solar system in 1995, the question of whether life exists in other corners of our galaxy shifted from, “Do exoplanets exist?” to “How do we recognize whether an exoplanet can support life?”
Since then, NASA’s Kepler mission and ground-based surveys of exoplanets have revealed… Read more
Nov. 14, 2018
In November 2017, a team of scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward a comet-like object known as ’Oumuamua—the first interstellar body ever found in our solar system—but the object proved too faint for the infrared telescope to detect.
Though initially disappointing, this non-detection of ’Oumuamua eventually provided new information about the cosmic interloper, according to a new… Read more