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Before Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, becoming the first human to step on another world, we had to be ready. A big part of the readiness came earlier that year, when three astronauts flew in Earth orbit during NASA’s Apollo 9 mission. Thi...

In September 1962, the same month Kennedy gave his famous “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, NASA selected Air Force test pilot James A. McDivitt to be an astronaut. Within three years, he would serve as command pilot on Gemini IV, s...

Friday, March 1 The variable star Algol in Perseus reaches minimum brightness at 7:19 p.m. EST, when it shines at magnitude 3.4. If you start viewing as soon as darkness falls, you can watch it more than triple in brightness (to magnitude 2.1) over t...

SpaceX’s Dragon crew capsule is set to launch from Cape Canaveral in a pivotal test flight for human-crewed missions that could happen as soon as this summer. The only passengers for this mission are a mannequin and some cargo for the Internati...

Galactic smash-ups can reignite or destroy galaxies — but which will it be? Astronomers using space- and ground-based telescopes to peer inside the mergers of nearby galaxies are hoping to learn more about these events and what they mean for th...

When New Horizons flew past Pluto and its moon Charon in 2015, it took a lot of pictures. From studying those images, scientists have recently realized that while both bodies are covered in craters, almost none of those craters are small, meaning the...

A NASA rover deployed to Chile’s Atacama desert has discovered microbes in one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth. It could prove helpful in the search for life on Red Planet. The life that the rover found was adapted to extremely sal...

(Inside Science) — Shifting, slipping and colliding tectonic plates played an essential role in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Such tectonic activity generated volcanoes that spewed carbon dioxide and other gases into the air. Ra...

With the overbearing glare of the Moon now out of the way, Jupiter stands out even better against the background stars of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer. If you target the planet through a telescope, you’ll easily see two dark ...

Mercury, the solar system's smallest and innermost planet, climbs to its maximum altitude in the evening sky tonight. To spot the planet during its peak, head outside about 30 minutes after sunset, when Mercury appears as a brilliantly bright "star"...

On Friday, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo flew in space for the second time, taking off from Mojave, California, after days of weather delay. SpaceShipTwo took off at 8:07 a.m. PST carrying two pilots, a crewmember, and a nearly full weight of ...

Spending your New Year’s Eve at work doesn’t sound like much fun, I guess. Unless it involves the farthest exploration of worlds in history, a midnight countdown led by Queen rock star Brian May, more than 1,000 friends and colleagues alo...

Friday, February 22 One of the sky’s most familiar constellations rules February’s sky from dusk until after midnight local time. Orion the Hunter appears at its highest in the south just as evening twilight fades to darkness, when it sta...

Following on the heels of its announcement to return to the moon this year, NASA announced Thursday the first batch of science projects and technology demonstrations they want to send skyward in 2019, assuming their commercial partners can launch on ...

Venus is a hellish environment. With a bone-dry, reddish-brown surface marred by thousands of volcanoes and covered in ancient lava flows, it’s not a place you want to spend your time. And sure, the planet has occasional rain showers, but they ...

The Israeli spacecraft Beresheet launched yesterday evening on a trip to the Moon, where it hopes to touch down in two months. This will be the first attempt at a lunar landing by a private company, and it’s also the first launch of an Israeli ...

Far from Earth, a tiny spacecraft punched an asteroid last night. Hayabusa2 swooped close to Ryugu today to collect asteroid dust. The JAXA spacecraft had spent the previous day leaving its usual orbit around the asteroid to zoom in close. After jus...

Scientists are still trying to figure out how the human body responds to long-duration spaceflight. It’s an important and open research question as NASA moves toward more deep space missions. In particular, a mission to Mars could require at le...

Astronomers have discovered a star in the Andromeda galaxy that has been regularly erupting for the past million years, leaving behind one of the biggest shells of ejected material scientists have ever seen. The new research, which was published la...

Neptune has a new moon, and it’s also the gas giant’s smallest to date — only a little over 20 miles across. The brand new satellite is called Hippocamp. Astronomers led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute discovered it using th...

Why did the hominin cross the plain? We may never know. But anthropologists are pretty sure that a smattering of bare footprints preserved in volcanic ash in Laetoli, Tanzania bear witness to an evolutionary milestone. These small steps, taken roughl...

Our culture has given us lots of terms for outstanding items, events, or people. But many of them contain one prefix that suggests the biggest or the best: super. Super Glue. Supernova. Super Bowl. Superman. Even the word that groups these expression...

Supermassive black holes lurk in the hearts of every large galaxy. Some blast out jets that can spill into its host galaxy or even beyond. The energy carried by the jets is deposited in the surrounding material, playing a crucial role in the evolutio...

Ask a dozen physicists what a black hole is, and you may get a dozen different answers – at least if those physicists are from different sub-fields. But new philosophy research suggests that may be okay, and may even lead to more interesting fi...

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 is ready to touch down on asteroid Ryugu and should do so later this week. On Monday morning, Japanese officials confirmed that the spacecraft will attempt to land at 6 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 21. The spacecraft ...

Tonight is a fantastic night to hunt for Sirius in the evening sky. The night sky’s brightest star (at magnitude –1.5) appears due south and at its highest position around 9 p.m. local time tonight. It then lies about one-third of the w...