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In a Q&A interview, author and science writer David Baron discusses the turn-of-the-century Mars craze, which he covers in his new book, "The Martians."

In about a week the

Earth has endured, and been shaped by, a constant rain of material from elsewhere in the Solar System. Some of the material was large, like the Chicxulub asteroid that ended the dinosaur's reign. But most of it is in the form of tiny micrometeorites. Those tiny rocks hold clues to Earth's ancient atmosphere.

August sees all of the naked eye worlds excepting Mars hiding in the dawn. Set your alarm, and you can uncover Mercury through Saturn all in the dawn twilight sky, crowned with a fine close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus on Tuesday, August 12th. You can see the changing scene each morning starting this weekend, as the two get ever closer from one morning to the next.

Ingenuity marked a number of milestones in space exploration. Arguably most importantly, it proved that powered flight was possible on another planet. However, it did have some limitations, such as being tied to the Perseverance rover and there only being one copy of the helicopter itself. AV Inc, one of the sub-contractors for Ingenuity, hopes to fix those problems with a proposed new mission called Skyfall that would involve six helicopters and no rover.

A four-legged robot tested under simulated Martian gravity jumps from wall to wall, demonstrating how future missions could navigate terrain too challenging for today's rovers.

SpaceX's Crew-10 astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday (Aug. 9) after living on the International Space Station for nearly five months.

Set an alarm and take a peek east in early dawn to follow Venus and Jupiter through their spectacular conjunction this week.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, August 8 – 17 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Taken on July 29 and July 30,

Direct images from the James Webb Space Telescope show what could be a Saturn-mass planet around Alpha Centauri.

The post Alpha Centauri Might Have a Planet, Webb Telescope Finds appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Even today, the names of women in astronomy are not as well known as they should be.

The post Honoring the Women of Astronomy appeared first on Sky & Telescope.