Space, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2017

How to Watch the Super Blue Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse

A lunar eclipse on Wednesday comes equipped with all sorts of superlatives — and most of North America will get to see at least some of the event. The Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse will occur in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, Jan. 31, when the full...

Nov 30, 2019

The Universe Remembers Gravitational Waves — And We Can Find Them

Gravitational waves slosh throughout the universe as ripples in space-time produced by some of the most cataclysmic events possible. With facilities like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo, we can now detect the strongest of those ripples as they wash over the Earth. But gravitational waves leave behind...

Nov 30, 2019

Boeing's Starliner Won't Reach Space Station, NASA Chief Says

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing's Starliner astronaut taxi suffered an anomaly today (Dec. 20) during its flight to the International Space Station during the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) mission. About 90 minutes after blastoff, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter that the capsule will not be able to reach...

Nov 30, 2019

The 10 Biggest Science Stories of the Decade

Given the rapid pace of change in technology and science, it can be easy to forget what we didn't know just a few short years ago. The past decade has seen breakthroughs in physics, biology and astronomy, to name just a few. Which of these discoveries are the most important...

Nov 30, 2019

The Decade in Astronomy: These Space Discoveries Shaped the 2010s

As the 2010s come to a close, it's time to revisit how some of the biggest space science stories shaped the decade. From the rise of TESS to flybys of Pluto and Cassini's dramatic demise, the past ten years have produced some incredible science. Here are some of our favorite...

Oct 31, 2019

The Curiosity Rover Just Took a Very Emo Photo of Its Rocky Martian Prison

Mars is the only known planet in the universe inhabited solely by robots. There's InSight, the sturdy robo-stethoscope listening for the Red Planet's heartbeat; there's Odyssey and the gang, a cadre of droids surveilling the planet from orbit. And then, climbing a lonely crater hundreds of miles away from its...

Oct 31, 2019

Monday, Mercury Makes Rare Appearance with a Trek Across the Sun. Here's How to Watch It.

Our cosmic neighbor Mercury is the runt of the solar system; it's not much bigger than Earth's moon and is so hard to spot that it's known as the elusive planet. But we're about to get a rare and spectacular view of the tiny world as it sails across the...

Oct 31, 2019

'Improbable Planet' Somehow Survives Being Swallowed by Red Giant Star

Scientists have discovered a survivalist planet that shouldn't exist orbiting a pulsating star. Using astroseismology data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, a team of researchers studying the red giant stars HD 212771 and HD 203949 detected oscillations, which are gentle pulsations at the surfaces of stars, lead...

Oct 31, 2019

Russian Military Launches Secret Surveillance Satellite Into Orbit

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched a top-secret military satellite designed to scope out other satellites in space on Monday (Nov. 25), according to government reports. The Soyuz-2.1v launch vehicle brought the satellite into orbit from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, which is roughly 500 miles or 800 kilometers north of Moscow, for...

Oct 31, 2019

Will 2020 Be the Year We Find Intelligent Alien Life?

In the past three decades, scientists have found more than 4,000 exoplanets. And the discoveries will keep rolling in; observations suggest that every star in the Milky Way galaxy hosts more than one planet on average. Given a convergence of ground- and space-based capability, artificial intelligence/machine learning research and other...

Sep 30, 2019

Is Our Solar System's Mysterious 'Planet 9' Really a Grapefruit-Size Black Hole?

Two physicists think that we should check to see if there's an ancient, grapefruit-size black hole hiding out in our solar system. And that tiny, heavy object might in fact take the place of a theoretical planet that some researchers think might be tugging on other objects in our solar...

Sep 30, 2019

Why NASA's Annoyed About Elon Musk's Giant Rocket

SpaceX has never flown a person into space in its Crew Dragon, its first crew-capable spacecraft. But already the company is showing off its much bigger, much shinier cousin: the Starship, built in Boca Chica, a coastal village at the southeastern tip of Texas, as part of a plan to...

Sep 30, 2019

See the Full Hunter's Moon Shine Bright Tonight

October's full moon, called the Hunter's Moon, will rise tonight (Oct. 13), reaching its peak fullness at 5:08 p.m. ET. The Hunter's Moon, which is the full moon following the Harvest Moon and the closest full moon to the fall equinox, is reportedly the best time for hunting deer and...

Sep 30, 2019

Fireball That Flew Over Japan in 2017 Was Tiny Piece of Giant Asteroid that Might One Day Threaten Earth

In the early morning of April 28, 2017, a small fireball crept across the sky over Kyoto, Japan. And now, thanks to data collected by the SonotaCo meteor survey, researchers have determined that the fiery space rock was a shard of a much larger asteroid that might (far down the...

Sep 30, 2019

NASA Teams Up with $100 Million Breakthrough Listen Project to Search for Intelligent Aliens

NASA's newest planet hunter is joining the hunt for intelligent aliens. Scientists working on the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will collaborate with the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), members of both teams announced today (Oct. 23). It's exciting that...