NASA’s DART Spacecraft Smashes Into an Asteroid—on Purpose
“This is the first time we’ve actually attempted to move something in our solar system with the intent of preventing a natural disaster that has been part…
Browsing Tag
planetary science
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Digs Up Organic Molecules on Mars
After trundling around the Jezero crater for 550 Martian days, NASA’s Perseverance rover has amassed nearly half its planned rock collection—including some…
The Webb Space Telescope Snaps Its First Photo of an Exoplanet
The JWST’s size and sensitivity enabled it to collect more light from this planet than any previous observatory has obtained. (Its photo looks grainier than…
Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth
“Each one of those kinds of pyrite is telling us something different about our planet, its origin, about life, and how it’s changed through time,” said…
Why the Search for Life on Mars Is Happening in Canada’s Arctic
Only the hardiest organisms can thrive in one of the coldest springs on earth. That’s why in the summers of 2017 and 2019, Lyle Whyte took a helicopter to…
Behold the Weird Physics of Double-Impact Asteroids
When an asteroid strikes a planet, it can pack a powerful punch—as the dinosaurs discovered to their detriment 66 million years ago. But what if two…
Astronomers Radically Reimagine the Making of the Planets
Start at the center, with the sun. Our middle-aged star may be more placid than most, but it is otherwise unremarkable. Its planets, however, are another…
Why Was the Tonga Eruption So Massive? Scientists Have New Clues
Just how big was the January eruption of the Hunga-Tonga volcano? Four months of intensive science has only bumped up the scale. You could point to the…
With Dusty Solar Panels, InSight’s Days on Mars Are Numbered
While InSight’s pair of solar panels, each one shaped like a decagonal (10-sided) pie, efficiently provide solar power to the lander, dust has always been…
NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Heads to Cape Canaveral
In 2011, Lindy Elkins-Tanton and a couple of colleagues wrote a paper exploring ideas about how tiny would-be planets called planetesimals might have formed…