As the Moon wedges itself between Earth and Sun, temporarily dimming the day’s light over parts of our planet, three rockets will take to the skies to observe how those brief moments of darkness affect Earth’s upper atmosphere. Rebecca Hall on Filming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire On April 8, NASA will launch three … Read more
In the current era of spaceflight, the Moon is arguably the place to be. International space agencies and private companies alike are racing to the lunar surface, hoping to establish a permanent presence on Earth’s natural satellite that would propel them to farther celestial pitstops. All that increased activity on the Moon may affect the … Read more
Mars is a desolate, irradiated, lifeless, windswept land. But it’s also the site of dramatic activity, as space rocks pummel the Martian surface. Asteroids or chunks of comets often scar Mars’ desert, in part because the Red Planet orbits near our solar system’s asteroid belt, a region teeming with millions of asteroids. And when they … Read more
The Starliner spacecraft is finally ready for launch, targeting a liftoff date in May. It’s been a struggle to get to this point for Boeing’s crew vehicle, which suffered from a series of unfortunate delays over the years, the last of which had to do with two major safety hazards discovered on the spacecraft. Were … Read more
In 1979, Alan Cummings, a scientist working on NASA’s unprecedented Voyager mission, entered a Caltech room in Pasadena, California, and saw an unusual, alien world projected on a screen. The brand-new image, just beamed back from space, revealed a place like no other ever seen. It was a moon teeming with vibrant volcanoes. Cummings, a … Read more
Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos, is finally setting some ambitious timelines, saying it plans to conduct an uncrewed Moon landing in as little as a year from now, deploying a demonstration version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) cargo lander. This ramps up the space rivalry big time, putting Bezos … Read more
House and Senate appropriators have released NASA’s final spending bill for the fiscal year 2024, focusing on the Artemis program’s goal of returning astronauts to the Moon. However, there’s still considerable uncertainty surrounding the agency’s plans for bringing back rocky samples from Mars. China’s Plan to Land Astronauts on the Moon NASA was allocated $24.875 … Read more
NASA suspects that the ice-clad moon Europa harbors a deep, deep sea — reaching some 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) down. And new evidence, from the space agency’s Juno craft, points to surface processes that create bounties of oxygen on Europa, some of which is transported into the world’s voluminous ocean. It’s … Read more
NASA still has plenty of cool projects afoot in the real world—did you hear about that asteroid-redirecting test? Or those space-friendly cameras?—but it’s also trying to stir imaginations in fantastically creative ways, too. Enter The Lost Universe, the agency’s first-ever tabletop roleplaying game. What Will VR Solve, Anyway? Its first what now? Yes, a TTRPG … Read more
Four astronauts are scheduled to ride on board the Orion spacecraft in September 2025 for NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. But before the Artemis crew can strap into Orion, the space agency still needs to resolve an issue with the spacecraft’s side hatch that could prevent the astronauts … Read more