Astronomy

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft captured a thermal image of Mars during a gravity-assist flyby, testing instruments ahead of its mission to explore Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa.

Spacecraft are expensive and intricately engineered machines designed to perform complex missions in harsh space environments. They're costly and require a long time to design and build. Due to their uniqueness and high value, and the need to keep them sterilized, they're assembled in cleanrooms that limit the amount of dust and microbes. New research shows that microbes are adapting to these clean rooms and learning how to thrive in them.

A glass bead retrieved by China's Chang'e-5 lunar mission is offering a glimpse into the moon's hidden interior and violent past.

Technology Readiness Levels (or TRL levels, because repeating the last word of initialisms is common in English) is a metric commonly used by NASA to define how developed a technology for use on a mission is. These typically range from 1-9, with 1 being an idea in someone's head, and 9 having been successfully flown on a mission. One of the assessments of new projects that NASA does is a check of the TRL levels of its constituent components - those with a higher level get higher marks, since it is assumed that the technology necessary to get them ready will require less work. So, sometimes, NASA and other organizations will sponsor smaller missions to work on a specific technology needed for one of its big flagship programs. That seems to be the approach from a team led by Keri Hoadley of the University of Florida, who recently laid out a mission concept for the Ultraviolet Type Ia Supernova CubeSat (UVIa).

After Superman and Peacemaker season 2, the DCU will expand with a new live-action take on the Green Lanterns for HBO.

For a while now, there has been a problematic mystery at the heart of the standard cosmological model. Although all observations support the expanding Universe model, observations of the early period of the cosmos give a lower rate of acceleration than more local observations. We call it the Hubble tension problem, and we have no idea how to solve it. Naturally, there have been several proposed ideas: what if general relativity is wrong; what if dark matter doesn't exist; what if the rate of time isn't uniform; heck, what if the entire Universe rotates. So, let's add a new idea to the pile: what if dark matter evolves?

Tracking the sources of photons is a hobby of many astrophysicists. Some types of photons are tied so closely to particular phenomena that tracking their sources would help answer some larger questions in astrophysics itself. Photons on the "511 keV line" are one such type of photon, and they have been overrepresented near the galactic core, with no known source being prolific enough to create them. A new paper from Zachary Metzler and Zorawar Wadiasingh of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center suggests one potential source - millisecond pulsar (MSP) binaries.

Full-throttle James Gunn is a glorious thing as witnessed in this promo for the R-rated Max series.

A lunchbox-sized radar system could help the FBI detect moving or stationary people by peering through walls via radio waves

A lunchbox-sized radar system could help the FBI detect moving or stationary people by peering through walls via radio waves

On Sunday (May 11), China launched a trio of Yaogan satellites classified as electromagnetic environment detection spacecraft.

Astronaut Don Pettit took this nighttime photo while the International Space Station orbited near the Andaman Sea in Southeast Asia.

In the upper left corner, surrounded by blue arms and

AI chatbot companions may not be real, but the feelings users form for them are. Some scientists worry about long-term dependency

Growing evidence suggests a source of nutrition might be right under our noses. But how important are such aeronutrients – and can we harness them to better treat deficiencies?

Growing evidence suggests a source of nutrition might be right under our noses. But how important are such aeronutrients – and can we harness them to better treat deficiencies?

Witness live views of Earth from the International Space Station as it orbits the planet. Space streaming company Sen is broadcasting 24/7 from the ISS in beautiful 4K HD.

In 2024 disasters displaced a record number of people both globally and in the U.S. About 11 million U.S. residents had to relocate to another part of the country because of hurricanes, floods and wildfires

Solar material from the eruption will likely miss Earth.