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Microbes living high up in a planet’s atmosphere could get knocked into space by fast-moving interplanetary dust, a new study suggests. It may not take an asteroid strike to transport life from one planet to another. Fast-moving dust could theoretically knock microbes floating high up in a world’s atmosphere out into space, potentially sending the […]

A LauncherOne test article — an entire vehicle expect for payload fairing and fins — leaves Virgin Orbit’s Long Beach, California, factory for integrated stage testing. Updated 10:00 p.m. Eastern. LUXEMBOURG CITY — Virgin Orbit announced Nov. 16 that it has received its first launch contract for a LauncherOne mission from a Defense Department agency . […]

Sea level in New York City is far more sensitive to changes in Greenland’s northern ice sheets than ice in is southern regions. Melting ice affects sea level rise differently depending on where it happens, according to a new model NASA is using to study the changing climate. The tool will help predict how the […]

Sally Ride , the first American woman in space, and Mae Jemison , the first African-American woman in space, were both pioneers in their fields. Ride was a physicist and entrepreneur as well as an astronaut. She applied to NASA in 1977, the first year that women were allowed to apply to the space program, […]

It’s time for Cyber Monday 2017 and the epic sales are under way for space fans! So, here’s a roundup of the best deals online for out-of-this-world gifts. We’ve scoured Amazon.com to find holiday discounts and deals on things like telescopes and binoculars, and space-themed apparel, household items and toys. If you’re looking for Lego […]

Next stop, space? A spacesuit from Final Frontier Design did its third round of Canadian flight testing last month in preparation for eventual space tourist flights. Between Oct. 2 and 5, the company flew its 3G Intra-Vehicular Activity suit on three flights over Ottawa on Falcon 20 jets; each flight had 18 parabolas to simulate […]

A wide view, in visible light, of the star W Hydrae and the surrounding sky. W Hydrae is similar in mass to Earth’s sun but is nearing the end of its life. Astronomers have captured a stunning new view of the surface of an aging red giant star , revealing new clues about what the […]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the company’s Dragon capsule on an uncrewed cargo run to the International Space Station on April 14, 2015. The same Dragon is schedule to launch toward the orbiting lab again on Dec. 4, 2017. If you want to make the case that spaceflight is about to take a giant […]

A member of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs), or as later dubbed “Mercury 13,” aviator Jerrie Cobb poses next to a Mercury spacecraft. Cobb and her fellow FLATs are the focus of a series in development for Amazon. The true life story of 13 women who underwent the same medical testing as NASA’s Mercury […]

For 20 years, NASA satellites have monitored Earth from space, tracking the pulse of life in seasonal patterns as heat moves around the planet, sea ice grows and shrinks, and vegetation blooms and recedes on the continents. And now, data gathered by a fleet of satellites circling Earth since 1997 have been visualized as a […]

Map of all matter — most of which is invisible dark matter — between Earth and the edge of the observable universe. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The past few decades have ushered in an amazing era in the science of […]

This inner slope of a crater on southern Mars has several of the seasonal dark streaks called “recurrent slope lineae,” or RSL. Bad news for microbes that want to make a home on Mars: A new study argues that dark streaks on the Martian surface are not caused by underground supplies of liquid water. In […]

The ominous black feature encroaching on the sun in this ultraviolet image is simply a region of low density in the star’s atmosphere. A large, dark “hole” has opened up in the sun’s atmosphere, allowing solar winds to rush out into space — an ordinary occurrence, but a spectacular one to see. NASA’s Solar Dynamics […]