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This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights . Star Wars: The Last Jedi follows the journey of Rey as the heroine discovers and learns about the Force, just as her teacher Luke Skywalker and his father Anakin did in the Galactic Rebellion […]

The illustration depicts charged particles from a solar storm stripping away charged particles of Mars’ atmosphere, one of the processes of Martian atmosphere loss studied by NASA’s MAVEN mission, beginning in 2014. Could a Mars-like planet be habitable if it was orbiting a red dwarf star that is cooler and less bright than our sun? […]

The iron dagger found in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun dates to around 1350 B.C., about 200 years before the Iron Age. Daggers, axes and jewelry made from rare iron during the Bronze Age are literally out of this world, according to new research finding that ancient artisans crafted these metal artifacts with […]

The Dawn spacecraft will move into an elliptical orbit around Ceres in the spring of 2018, depleting its remaining hydrazine about three to four months later. NEW ORLEANS — NASA’s Dawn mission to the main asteroid belt, granted a second extended mission earlier this year, will end later next year after a final set of close-up […]

A used SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station for the second time Sunday (Dec. 17), delivering more than 2 tons of NASA supplies just in time for Christmas. The uncrewed Dragon capsule was captured by astronauts using the space station’s robotic arm at 5:57 a.m. EST (1057 GMT) as both spacecraft […]

Three new crew members for the International Space Station are on their way to the orbiting outpost, where they will begin their six month expedition by ringing in the New Year circling Earth. Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, Norishige “Neemo” Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and astronaut Scott “Maker” Tingle of NASA launched […]

Orbital ATK, one of the companies Thales Alenia is working with on NextSTEP-2, has proposed using a version of its Cygnus cargo spacecraft as part of NASA’s proposed Deep Space Gateway. WASHINGTON — Thales Alenia Space is partnering with three U.S. companies that are working on NASA studies of concepts for the proposed Deep Space Gateway […]

This natural-color image shows the copious amount of smoke from the Thomas Fire in California. It was taken with the with NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). A NASA satellite captured an image showing a thick curtain of brown smoke billowing from the Thomas Fire in Southern California yesterday (Dec. 14). The image shows the […]

Two “Falcons” took flight today (Dec. 15), each lofting “Star Wars” droids on new journeys into space. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) the same day the Millennium Falcon returned to theaters in the new Lucasfilm movie “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” SpaceX […]

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, it seems, is a Vader fan. When Bezos’ private spaceflight company, Blue Origin, launched the first test flight of its New Shepard Crew Capsule 2.0 this week, it had a very special passenger aboard: a dummy named “Mannequin Skywalker” — which bears a striking resemblance to Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader himself. […]

Liftoff! Credit: SpaceX The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:36 a.m. EST (1536 GMT) on Friday, Dec. 15. Return to Cape Canaveral Credit: SpaceX Flames beneath the rocket booster reflect off the water at Cape Canaveral as the Falcon 9 carries the Dragon cargo spacecraft into […]

SpaceX launched and landed a used rocket today (Dec. 15), pulling off yet another spaceflight double play during a delivery mission for NASA that gets the company a big step closer to its goal of complete reusability. SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket  lifted off today at 10:36 a.m. EST (1536 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air […]

The sensation of weightlessness, or zero gravity, happens when the effects of gravity are not felt. Technically speaking, gravity does exist everywhere in the universe because it is defined as the force that attracts two bodies to each other. But astronauts in space usually do not feel its effects. The International Space Station , for […]