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Scientists could soon get a precise age for the giant impact basins on the moon, and a better understanding of the impact history of the young Earth, thanks to a new geological map of the moon’s youngest large impact site, the Mare Orientale basin. Mare Orientale sits on the edge of the face of the […]
Scientists have found what seems to be the oldest direct evidence of hot water flowing on Mars during its ancient past. The discovery could further indicate that the Red Planet, despite its arid and desolate appearance today, may have been capable of supporting life long ago. The evidence was delivered to Earth and sealed within […]
Our changing climate continues to contribute to another record-setting month, with temperature extremes and drought expansion across much of the US. Close to 80 climate stations across the country set new records reporting that October 2024 was the all-time driest month, according to a recent statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Major […]
For twelve years, we’ve watched Curiosity crawl its way over the rocky surface of Mars, decoding mysteries of the Red Planet and broadcasting back home pictures and data from the strange Martian environment. The Mars rover, built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has slowly scaled Mount Sharp since 2014. This mountain, officially monikered “Aeolis […]
General relativity has passed one of its most precise tests ever thanks to observations of the past 11 billion years of cosmic evolution collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI. Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory, general relativity, has remained humanity’s best description of gravity for the past 100 years. Cosmologists have used general relativity to […]
Ever since the ancient Greeks first made observations of the circular Moon and the skies, scientists have known that the Earth is a sphere. We’ve all seen beautiful images of the Earth from space, some photographed by astronauts and others collected remotely by orbiting satellites. So why doesn’t our planet look round when we’re standing […]
How the universe got its large magnetic fields has remained one of the stickiest outstanding problems in astrophysics. Now, researchers have proposed a novel solution: a giant “dust battery” operating when the first stars appeared. Magnetic fields are everywhere in the universe. Of course, there’s Earth’s magnetic field, which deflects dangerous cosmic radiation, wiggles our […]
At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of the universe – from our planet to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Supercomputers enable projects across diverse research, such as making discoveries about the Sun’s activity that affects technologies in space and life on Earth, building […]
Every day, invisible to the human eye, thousands of enigmatic flashes of cosmic energy known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) erupt across the sky, releasing as much energy in milliseconds as the sun does in a day. Thanks to their fleeting nature, scientists have often had to rely on luck just to observe FRBs, let […]
China’s space agency has opened up a first round of applications for researchers to borrow its Chang’e 6 lunar far side samples. Chang’e 6 launched in May this year. The complex, multi-spacecraft, 53-day mission collected samples from Apollo crater on the far side of the moon and returned to Earth in late June. Now, small […]