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NASA is opening a new anti-harassment campaign for employees weeks after a congressional committee asked U.S. science agencies to investigate their harassment policies. Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot announced the new measures in a video message on YouTube yesterday (Feb. 1). Lightfoot’s message comes after the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology requested that […]

The universe is filled with galaxies, and often a large galaxy like our own will have several smaller ones orbiting it. Astronomers looked at one particular group of galaxies and noticed their circling was a bit too orderly for current models to explain. Most scientists’ understanding of our universe includes a substance called dark matter, […]

WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a launch license for the inaugural launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy , scheduled for Feb. 6. The license by the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation , or AST, is dated Feb. 2 and covers only the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, the largest U.S. launch vehicle […]

This self-portrait, taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Jan. 23, 2018, shows the vehicle on Vera Rubin Ridge, which it’s been investigating for the past several months. Poking up behind Curiosity’s head-like mast is the 3.4-mile-high Mount Sharp. A new self-portrait by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the dusty robot hard at work on the […]

The galaxies NGC 2336 and NGC 2937 look like a penguin and its egg, respectively, in this photo, which incorporates data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Fans of the Horsehead and Crab nebulas, take note: There’s another giant galactic animal on the scene. Two interacting galaxies about 23 million light-years from Earth look […]

A toilet on the ISS. It’s an extreme version of trash into treasure: New research finds that microbes can transform poop into fuel for edible bacteria. The process could be one way to provide food for astronauts on deep-space missions, while also solving the intractable problem of what to do with those astronauts’ waste. [How […]

Can you find the cosmonauts’ feet? Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov are pictured outside of the International Space Station’s Pirs docking compartment during a spacewalk on Feb. 2, 2018. Two cosmonauts took a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Feb. 2) to tackle a long-awaited upgrade to the communications system on the […]

For about half an hour after dusk during the two week period preceding the new moon on February 15, look west-southwest for a broad wedge of faint light rising from the horizon and centered on the ecliptic (green line). This is the zodiacal light – reflected sunlight from interplanetary particles of matter concentrated in the […]

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity recently took a quick break from its mountain-climbing work to reflect on its epic Red Planet journey. About three months ago, the car-size robot captured a series of photos from Vera Rubin Ridge, more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) above the floor of Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater. Mission team […]

Basaltic meteorites are common in the Solar System. This example from Mars — called North-West Africa (NWA) 7034, nicknamed “Black Beauty” — has a relatively large amount of water in it. A new study of a rare basaltic meteorites called angrites suggests that volatiles, which are elements with relatively low boiling points such as water, […]

In “Please Stand By” (2018), Dakota Fanning plays Wendy, a young woman determined to deliver a “Star Trek” script to Paramount Pictures. “Please Stand By” — the new movie that shows a young woman running away from home to take part in a “Star Trek” script contest — was conceived as a sort of love […]

NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image of the major fires burning in Northern California’s wine country the morning of Oct. 12, 2017. NASA is well known for observating space, but the agency also has a strong hand in monitoring Earth. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) is a collection of satellites designed to monitor and understand […]

Michael Ciannilli, manager of NASA’s Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program, at the Columbia Preservation Office on the 16th floor of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Fifteen years after the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven were lost returning home from a 16-day mission, pieces of the winged […]