Astronomy

People always want to know what will happen to Earth when the Sun eventually swells up as a red giant. For one thing, the expanding Sun will turn the inner planets into cinders. It will almost certainly spell the end of life on our planet. Mars might become more temperate and hospitable to life. In addition, it could well be a boon for the gas giant Jupiter and its moons. That's because the habitable zone of the Solar System will move outward from where it is now, to a spot encompassing the Jovian system and forcing changes on all of those worlds.

Raman spectroscopy uses scattered to identify a substance’s chemical ingredients and is one of the most widely used scientific methods in space exploration. It is used for lunar exploration to identify volcanic minerals, water ice, and space weathering, and has been limited to obtaining data from lunar orbiters. But how can Raman spectroscopy be conducted on the lunar surface to help us better understand our nearest celestial neighbor? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of NASA and academic researchers discussed the Raman Cube Rover (R3R), which would be delivered to the lunar surface via the private space company, Astrobotic.

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the ninth time ever today (May 27), on a bold test flight that featured the first-ever significant reuse of Starship hardware.

Weather forecasts based on AI are faster and sometimes more accurate than traditional ones, but they may miss rare and unprecedented weather events – which are becoming more common as the climate changes

Weather forecasts based on AI are faster and sometimes more accurate than traditional ones, but they may miss rare and unprecedented weather events – which are becoming more common as the climate changes

Weather forecasts based on AI are faster and sometimes more accurate than traditional ones, but they may miss rare and unprecedented weather events – which are becoming more common as the climate changes

Weather forecasts based on AI are faster and sometimes more accurate than traditional ones, but they may miss rare and unprecedented weather events – which are becoming more common as the climate changes

Behavioral ecologist David Hughes, who consulted on the video game that inspired the hit TV show The Last of Us, speaks about how our experience with the COVID pandemic changed the way we relate to zombie fiction

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week, would slow efforts to green the energy system as climate change accelerated

The 2025 Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit (H2M2) will be held May 28 and 29 in Washington, D.C., and will include panels discussing the future of human space exploration.

Ministrokes, also known as transient ischemic attacks, can eventually lead to cognitive declines as steep as those that follow a full-on stroke, new research finds

The galaxy cluster Abell S1063 dominates the center of this JWST image. It's a massive cluster of galaxies about 4.5 billion light-years away. While it dominates the picture, it's not the primary target. It serves as a gravitational lens that magnifies even more distant galaxies that appear as glowing streaks of light around its circular edges.

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and their developers have switched their focus to making them cheaper rather than more efficient. NTP should answer that by offering high thrust and specific impulse. NASA's DRACO Program, the standard-bearer for NTP systems, provides a specific impulse of around 900 seconds, about double a traditional chemical rocket, but half that of most ion thrusters. To increase that number even further, researchers at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and The Ohio State University have been working on a novel configuration of NTP called the Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR) that promises almost to double the specific impulse of traditional NTP systems while maintaining similar thrust levels. However, the system has some engineering challenges to overcome, and a new paper coming out in Acta Astronautica describes some incremental progress on making this improved engine a reality.

A massive galaxy cluster, Abell S1063, forms a gravitation lens, revealing the warped light from more distant galaxies dating back to the early universe in this James Webb Space Telescope image.

The worlds inside our heads can be dramatically different. What does that reveal about how our minds shape our lives, asks cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The worlds inside our heads can be dramatically different. What does that reveal about how our minds shape our lives, asks cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The 2025 Manhattanhenge season starts today with the half sun visible on the New York grid.

A skeleton found in London records a brutal killing about 1200 years ago, thought to be a rare example of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England

A skeleton found in London records a brutal killing about 1200 years ago, thought to be a rare example of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England