Astronomy

Surprising colors and stunning features are captured in a new image of Mars' surface.

In the latest attack on science by the Trump administration, researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center will no longer receive data from a fleet of military satellites.

Failed Orbital Mission Loses Human Remains, Space Pot

For long-duration missions, female astronauts generally use hormonal contraception to suppress their periods. But this method has potential health risks and requires special storage. Pads and tampons create waste in space. Now researchers have tested menstrual cups on a sub-orbital rocket flight, where they experienced the force of launch, and found they performed identically to ground control cups. This could provide a new option to female astronauts on future missions.

Rivers are one of the main ways that plastics get into the world's oceans, and now we can identify where plastic waste accumulates from space. Researchers used data from the Worldview-3 satellite to identify and map plastic material and polymer-coated surfaces in a watershed on the US-Mexico border. They collected different waste from stream channels and then identified their specific infrared absorption features, matching them to satellite imagery.

In principle, this impossible math allows for a glue-free bridge of stacked blocks that can stretch across the Grand Canyon—and into infinity

Sprites have been known to form above intense thunderstorms.

Some carbon dioxide absorbed by fig trees gets turned into calcium carbonate within the wood and the surrounding soil, ensuring that the carbon is kept out of the air for longer

Some carbon dioxide absorbed by fig trees gets turned into calcium carbonate within the wood and the surrounding soil, ensuring that the carbon is kept out of the air for longer

Are these trees growing on Mars?

A scene from Apple TV+'s "Invasion" Season 3

Humans have used the stars to navigate, keep time, and understand our place in the universe.

Titan Books' new novelization of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 'Galactus Trilogy' heralds the coming of July’s 'Fantastic Four' blockbuster.

The ALMA radio telescope array in the Atacama Desert temporarily halted operations after a rare snowfall blanketed the base camp last week.

The "Golden Handle" appears each month when the sun illuminates a mountain range lining a vast impact crater.

If you could see the Universe through a radio-wave "eye", you'd detect mini-halos of relativistic particles creating radio emissions around some galaxy clusters. Astronomers long figured those halos are relative "recent" happenings in the nearby Universe and didn't occur in the early epochs of cosmic history. That's all changed now that the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio observatory in Europe has revealed newborn galaxies in the early Universe already surrounded by a halo of particles. It's a rare look at what such clusters were like soon after they formed.

How accurate are the exoplanet radius measurements obtained by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how hundreds of exoplanetary radii measured by TESS during its mission might be incorrect and the data could be underestimating the radii measurements. This study has the potential to help astronomers develop more efficient methods more estimating exoplanetary characteristics, which could influence whether or not they are Earth-sized.

What can Earth-sized exoplanets teach scientists about the formation and evolution of exoplanets throughout the cosmos? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as an international team of researchers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet that exhibits temperatures and a density comparable to Earth. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of Earth-sized exoplanets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.

The "One Big Beautiful Bill," now enacted, directs that space shuttle Discovery be removed from the Smithsonian and placed on display at Space Center Houston by January 2027.

A study of fossils from the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago shows that forests in many parts of the world were wiped out, disrupting the carbon cycle and ensuring that Earth remained hot for millions of years