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Science / Space

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Ingenious Minds

AOL Co-Founder Steve Case Talks With Smithsonian Geologist John Grant About the Search for Life on Mars

In the near future, we are going to know if life exists elsewhere in the universe

The NIST-4 Kibble balance, an electromagnetic weighing machine that is used to measure Planck's constant, and in turn, redefine the kilogram.

Scientists Are About to Redefine the Kilogram and Shake Up Our System of Measures

After more than 100 years of defining the kilogram according to a metal artifact, humanity is preparing to change the unit based on a constant of nature

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Ingenious Minds

Astrophysicist Michelle Thaller on Understanding Our Place in the Universe

Autodesk vice president Brian Mathews talks with the NASA science communicator about the search for life on other planets and why it’s important

A silica sphere with a radius of 50 nanometers is trapped levitating in a beam of light.

Optical Tweezers Give Scientists a Tool to Test the Laws of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum superposition is one of the great mysteries of physics—a mass existing in two states at once—and scientists hope to probe the phenomenon

An enhanced-color image of Mercury taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2012 as part of a mission to map the geologic features of the planet.

Spacecraft Launching This Week Will Explore the Mysteries of Mercury

The BepiColombo mission will study the geology and magnetism of the smallest planet to search for clues of our solar system’s beginnings

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man.

Smithsonian Curator Reflects on What ‘First Man’ Gets Right About Neil Armstrong’s Journey to the Moon

The new film lays bare the personal sacrifice and peril that accompanied NASA’s historic mission

An artist’s conception of a distant Solar System Planet X, which could be shaping the orbits of smaller extremely distant outer solar system objects like 2015 TG387.

New Discovery Stirs Up Signs of the Elusive Planet 9

A new minor planet called “the Goblin” is the second most distant known object in the solar system

Illustration of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observing an M dwarf star with orbiting planets.

TESS Space Telescope Will Find Thousands of Planets, but Astronomers Seek a Select Few

NASA’s new space telescope has already discovered two planets, but the hunt for a world like Earth is just getting started

What Would Happen if the Earth Stopped Rotating? and More Questions From our Readers

You asked, we answered

Armstrong’s pressurized spacesuit, measuring nearly 5 feet 7 inches tall, featured anodized aluminum gauges and valves. (Detail)

The Latest on the Kickstarter Campaign to Conserve Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit

As a new biopic blasts off, the protective suit worn by the ‘First Man’ on the moon is readied for its star turn

Betsy Congdon, lead engineer for Parker Solar Probe’s heat shield, looks on as technician Tony Ahan attaches the interface plates that will allow the heat shield above them to eventually be installed onto the spacecraft.

Behind the Scenes With the Spacecraft That Will Soar Through the Sun’s Atmosphere

The probe, which launches Sunday, will attempt to solve enduring mysteries about the sun

Nine Travel Tips From Astronauts

What can terrestrial travelers learn from people who have been to space?

Berry started his career colorizing actual telescope data. His more recent work includes this artistic impression of a black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 1068. The material trapped around the black hole is moving so fast that the light itself is either compressed to blue where the material is coming toward the viewer, or stretched to red, where it is rushing away from the viewer.

Art Meets Science

The Supernova That Launched a Thousand Gorgeous Space Images

By colorizing one of the first Hubble satellite images, illustrator Dana Berry ushered in a new era of stunning space visuals

New Research

Scientists Explain The Thrill of Detecting a Neutrino From a Far-Off Galaxy

For the first time, the IceCube observatory has triumphantly tracked a neutrino back to a massive blazar

Dancing during the last day of Hatun Puncha.

Andean Solstice Celebrations Capture the Wondrous Churn of Spacetime

Exploring the similarities and differences between Indigenous and Western cosmologies

A 2018 colorized image of Jupiter's south pole created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset, using data from NASA's Juno spacecraft.

How Jupiter May Have Gifted Early Earth With Water

A new model of the solar system suggest we have gas giants to thank for our watery world

Mission specialist Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space.

An Astronaut Reflects on Sally Ride’s Legacy for Women in STEM

Ride encouraged girls to embrace science and engineering, helping democratize space for all. But more work is needed

Say hello to SMAP

This NASA Satellite Can Map the Planet’s Soil Moisture Content In Just Three Days

The speedy collection of this data will help with crop management and flood prediction

The imagined surface of Kepler-186f, an Earth-size planet orbiting a small red star.

NASA’s New Exoplanet Travel Bureau Lets You ‘Tour’ Far-Distant Planets In 360 Degrees

Eager space tourists can now visit sunny Kepler-186f, a moon of Kepler-16b or the Earth-like TRAPPIST-1e virtually

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