Space, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 28, 2021

Watch SpaceX launch and (hopefully) land its giant 10th Starship prototype today

Update, 3:33 p.m. ET, March 3: SpaceX attempted to launch SN10 at 3:14 p.m. ET, but aborted one-tenth of a second before liftoff, just after the rockets fired. After a brief evaluation, the company said at 3:30 p.m. ET that it would make another attempt to launch SN10 about two...

Feb 28, 2021

US Air Force says it will test bizarre 'hypersonic' weapon this month

At some point in the next few weeks, a B-52H bomber will carry a missile high into the air and launch it at an unprecedented velocity toward its target, according to the U.S. Air Force. If everything goes according to plan, that missile will accelerate to more than five times...

Feb 28, 2021

NASA tested its new moon rocket in Mississippi, and it only caught on fire a little bit

NASA conducted its second major test of its powerful new moon rocket, and this time it only caught on fire a little bit. The Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage test took place late Thursday afternoon (March 18) at NASA's coastal Mississippi test site, in a facility designed to hold...

Feb 28, 2021

Catch March's full supermoon Worm Moon this Sunday

March's full moon — by some accounts a supermoon — will dazzle skywatchers this Sunday (March 28), as spring's warm weather invites more people to venture outside to gaze upward. The full moon lasts just an instant, but dedicated moon watchers can catch it at 2:48 p.m. EDT (18:48 UTC)...

Feb 28, 2021

Mysterious explosion over Western US was likely SpaceX rocket debris, experts say

Skywatchers in the Pacific Northwest saw an unexpected display of pyrotechnics overhead on Thursday night (March 25). In video footage, a slow-motion meteor shower appears to strafe overhead, with dozens of glowing orbs dragging fiery tails across the sky. In reality, it was likely the death spiral of a SpaceX...

Feb 28, 2021

How the 'Worm Moon' helped free the stuck ship Ever Given in the Suez Canal

It took a little help from the full moon to free the massive Ever Given cargo ship from its perch stranded in the Suez Canal. For nearly a week, the boat debacle took the internet by storm: a 1,300-foot-long (400 meters) container ship had gotten wedged into a key trading...

Jan 31, 2021

Welcome to Mars! UAE's Hope probe enters orbit around Red Planet.

After a nail-biting 27 minutes, the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) first-ever interplanetary mission has successfully reached orbit around Mars. The spacecraft, dubbed Hope, launched July 19, 2020, atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket, then spent seven months trekking to the Red Planet. Today (Feb. 9), Hope needed to fire its thrusters...

Jan 31, 2021

What is the cosmological constant?

The cosmological constant is presumably an enigmatic form of matter or energy that acts in opposition to gravity and is considered by many physicists to be equivalent to dark energy. Nobody really knows what the cosmological constant is exactly, but it is required in cosmological equations in order to reconcile...

Jan 31, 2021

Perseverance beams back first images of Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover just landed on the Martian surface, and it has already sent home its first two images. The rover landed on the Red Planet on Thursday (Feb. 18) after an unfathomably fast plunge through the atmosphere, followed by a rapid deceleration thanks to a never-before used skycrane. The...

Jan 31, 2021

There's a secret code in the Mars rover's parachute

When NASA's Perseverance rover deployed its parachute during its death-defying plunge through the Red Planet's atmosphere on Feb. 18, it flashed a secret code of red-and-white stripes across the sky, NASA scientists confirmed in a news conference on Monday (Feb. 22). Internet sleuths cracked the code six hours after learning...

Dec 31, 2020

A giant black hole keeps evading detection and scientists can't explain it

An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers' nets. Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk at the hearts of most, if not all, galaxies. Our own Milky Way has one as massive as 4 million suns, for example, and M87's — the only black hole ever imaged directly —...

Dec 31, 2020

Largest canyon in the solar system revealed in stunning new images

About 87 million miles (140 million kilometers) above the Grand Canyon, an even larger, grander abyss cuts through the gut of the Red Planet. Known as Valles Marineris, this system of deep, vast canyons runs more than 2,500 miles (4,000 km) along the Martian equator, spanning nearly a quarter of...

Dec 31, 2020

SpaceX is about to run its final test of Starship SN9 before 1st launch

SpaceX is gearing up to test the ninth prototype of its big, shiny rocket, Starship SN9 Wednesday (Jan. 20), lighting up its engines for what should be the last time before its inaugural flight. The test is expected before 5 p.m. Central Time. The rocket won't go anywhere during this...

Dec 31, 2020

Here's how to watch the full 'wolf moon' this week

January's full moon, popularly known as the wolf moon, is almost upon us. Here's howl to watch it shine brightly this Thursday (Jan. 28). The moon will be at its fullest for just an instant — on Thursday, that happens at 2:16 p.m. EST (19:16 UTC). But, as with every...

Nov 30, 2022

The largest telescope on Earth is coming to hunt radio-waves from the early universe

Construction has started on the largest telescope array on Earth. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will contain hundreds of radio antennae spread across two continents, is now under construction in both South Africa's Karoo region and Western Australia's Murchison Shire. Together, the two sites – named SKA-Mid and SKA-Low,...