Space, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2019

US Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Lands After Record 780-Day Mystery Mission

The U.S. Air Force's unpiloted X-37B space plane landed back on Earth Sunday (Oct. 27) after a record 780 days in orbit , racking up the fifth ultra-long mission for the military's mini-shuttle fleet. The X-37B's Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5) mission ended with a smooth autonomous touchdown at the...

Aug 31, 2019

Unpiloted Russian Soyuz Capsule Returns to Earth with Humanoid on Board

An uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft returned to Earth Friday (Sept. 6), bringing a humanoid robot home and wrapping up a first-of-its-kind test flight to the International Space Station. The Soyuz MS-14 space capsule landed at 5:32 p.m. EDT (2132 GMT) Friday on the steppes of south-central Kazakhstan, where the local...

Aug 31, 2019

Why Is It So Hard to Land on the Moon?

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. E.D.T. on Monday, Sept. 16 Space is hard. That was the takeaway on Sept. 7, when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lunar lander during an attempt to touch down at the moon's south pole. India...

Aug 31, 2019

Russia Says It Will Keep Source of Hole (and Air Leak) on Soyuz Secret— But NASA Wants to Know: Report

Amid reports that the Russians will keep the cause of an air leak discovered at the International Space Station in 2018 secret, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has promised to speak personally with the head of the Russian space agency. They have not told me anything, Bridenstine said during a Houston...

Aug 31, 2019

Get 5 Issues of 'All About Space' or 'How It Works' for $5 in Our Fall 2019 Sale!

With the autumnal equinox of 2019, the fall season has officially landed in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it comes an amazing deal from Live Science's partner magazines All About Space and How It Works. For a limited time only (through Oct. 13), you can get FIVE issues for just...

Aug 31, 2019

Astronaut Snaps Photo of Her Friend's Launch Into Space. And It's Absolutely Stunning.

The best view of today's crew launch turned out to be from the spacecraft's destination itself, the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and United Arab Emirates spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today (Sept. 25) at 9:57...

Aug 31, 2019

India's Lost Moon Lander Is Somewhere in This Photo

An image taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on Sept. 17, 2019, shows the Vikram lander's attempted touchdown site. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Space.com)It looks like just a barren moonscape of craters, but somewhere in this image is a hunk of metal and electronics that carried a country's hopes of...

Jul 31, 2019

An Asteroid Bigger Than the Empire State Building Will Pass Earth Soon. But Don't Worry.

On Aug. 10, Asteroid 2006 QQ23 will fly within 0.049 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) of Earth at about 10,400 mph (16,740 km/h). This might not seem close, but it is close enough to classify the object as a near-Earth asteroid. Additionally, because it is within 0.05 astronomical units (4.65...

Jul 31, 2019

Bits of Corpse from One of the Universe's Oldest Stars Found Inside Its 'Child'

Astronomers have detected evidence of one of the first stars to emerge after the Big Bang birthed the universe 13.8 billion years ago. They found traces of an exploded, ancient star tucked inside a star that's nearly as old. Located about 35,000 light-years from Earth on the other side of...

Jul 31, 2019

There Are Thousands of Tardigrades on the Moon. Now What?

Tardigrades, which live on every continent on Earth, are also (maybe) living on the moon, following the crash of a lunar lander carrying thousands of the microscopic water bears. Did any of them survive the impact? If they did, what happens to them now? When the tardigrades were placed on...

Jul 31, 2019

'UFOs' Are Flying Out from Supermassive Black Holes and Reshaping Galaxies

Hot ionized gas is streaming out of the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole and slamming into its surroundings at a significant fraction of the speed of light. And this kind of ultra-fast outflow (UFO) might explain the nearly empty darkness that surrounds the center of many galaxies, astronomers...

Jul 31, 2019

Astronaut in Space Stares Into the Eye of Hurricane Dorian, a Category 4 Storm

Hurricane Dorian strengthened into a powerful Category 4 storm overnight, with astronauts and satellites capturing stunning views of the storm's eye from space today (Aug. 31). On the International Space Station, astronaut Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency spotted Hurricane Dorian as it moved across the Atlantic Ocean toward...

Jun 30, 2019

Does the Universe Rotate?

If you look around space, you'll notice a lot of things — the planets, stars, moons, even the galaxy itself — have one thing in common: they're spinning. So, is the universe spinning, too? This mystery is one that cosmologists have been acutely studying, because it's one that can tell...

Jun 30, 2019

What Happens in Intergalactic Space?

The vast voids between galaxies can stretch millions of light-years across and may appear empty. But these spaces actually contain more matter than the galaxies themselves. If you took a cubic meter, there would be less than one atom in it, Michael Shull, an astronomer at the University of Colorado...

Jun 30, 2019

Something’s Missing in This Stunning Photo of Space Station Passing in Front of the Midday Sun

Swirling 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) completes a full orbit of our planet every 90 minutes or so. You can see it with your naked eyes at night (at least, you can see a white dot of steady-cruising light), but spotting the station during...