Tag Archives | space.com

The ozone hole over Antarctica shrunk to its smallest maximum-extent in September 2017. Here, in this false-color view of the monthly-averaged total ozone the blue and purple indicate areas with the least ozone, while yellows and reds mean the most ozone. Higher temperatures over Antarctica this year shrank the hole in the ozone layer to […]

Recovery team members work in and around China’s Shenzhou-11 spacecraft on Nov. 18, 2016, just after it landed with taikonauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong. China is developing a space plane that can carry crew and aims to launch the vehicle for the first time in 2020, according to media reports. China plans to launch […]

By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | November 2, 2017 09:49am ET [embedded content] A new “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” commercial  with brand-new footage debuted during the World Series Wednesday (Nov. 1) and it brings Luke Skywalker back to his old friend the Millennium Falcon! Take a look at the commercial above. The new commercial […]

Legos are the greatest toy of all-time, as delightful and intriguing for adults as they are for children of all ages. Since the Lego brick system debuted in 1958, there have been thousands of different sets released, with millions of bricks. Today, the Lego company has around 1,000 different sets for sale, with themes ranging […]

The Dark Energy Camera is mounted in the Victor Blanco telescope, pictured here with other telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Adam Hadhazy, writer and editor for The Kavli Foundation , contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights . The prevailing view of the universe has just passed a rigorous new […]

[embedded content] A couple has taken gender reveals to new heights. Lance Patrick and his girlfriend, Ashley Blankenship, just announced their baby’s gender to the world via a weather-balloon mission to the stratosphere . The duo launched their balloon on Sept. 24 from the mountains near Bishop, California, with the aid of Earth to Sky […]

Tomorrow morning (Nov. 13), Venus and Jupiter will rise together in the morning sky, only a few hours after the planets reach “conjunction” at 1:05 a.m. Eastern Time.  Conjunctions occur when two planets share the same right ascension, the east-west longitude in the sky as measured from an observer on Earth. Since the major planets […]

It’s been 45 years since a crewed spacecraft journeyed toward the moon with a “trans-lunar injection,” but NASA plans to make that happen again in just a few years. The agency recently released a video showing the profile for the first uncrewed test of its new moon mission profile, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). The […]

Graphic representation of DEEP IN (Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration). Experts in interstellar travel have picked future candidates to make the first extrasolar trek. Their names: The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and tardigrades, otherwise known as water bears. “These are real interstellar passengers,” said Philip Lubin, head of the Starlight program at the University of […]

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen dangles over a mock-up of part of the International Space Station during a microgravity simulation in the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Oct 24, 2017. You have to dangle before you can (space)walk. A new photo shows spacesuit-clad Canadian Space Agency astronaut […]

The Lego Ideas Women of NASA set, which celebrates four female pioneers from the U.S. space history, is now for sale. History-making astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison now share store shelf space with ninjas, knights and superheroes as the newest Lego minifigures for sale. “Women of NASA,” a new LEGO Ideas set celebrating the […]

The atmosphere of the sun is composed of several layers, mainly the photosphere, the chromosphere and the corona. It’s in these outer layers that the sun’s energy, which has bubbled up from the sun’s interior layers, is detected as sunlight. The lowest layer of the sun’s atmosphere is the photosphere. It is about 300 miles […]

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of sinuous gullies snaking down a Red Planet dune on Aug. 17, 2017. These Martian gullies may be linear, but they’re far from straight. A striking new photo by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows dozens of parallel gullies snaking their way down the face […]