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NASA

Apollo 15 Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin salutes the U.S. flag. This photograph was taken by Astronaut David R. Scott, Apollo 15 commander.

Astronauts’ Footprints May Have Warmed the Moon

“Lost” data from the 1970s helped scientists solve an enduring lunar mystery

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

An illustration of lightning on Jupiter's northern hemisphere, using an image from the JunoCam.

New Research

Jupiter’s Lightning Is More Earth-Like Than We Thought

Juno is providing scientists with new insights into the gas giant’s flashes of light

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

Pluto, and its largest moon Charon, as seen from the New Horizons spacecraft.

Is Pluto Actually a Mash-up of a Billion Comets?

Researchers speculate the beloved dwarf planet could actually be a giant comet

An illustration of GRACE-FO in orbit.

Meet NASA’s New Dynamic Duo: A Pair of Climate Change-Tracking Satellites

The pair will measure changes in Earth’s gravitational field to monitor melting glaciers, rising seas, droughts and more

This test image from one of the four cameras on TESS captures a portion of the southern sky along the plane of our galaxy.

200,000 Stars Twinkle in First Test Image From NASA’s Planet-Hunting Satellite

Once its cameras are calibrated, TESS will capture 400 times as much sky as this test image

Europa

New Research

A New Look at Old Data Suggests Europa Shoots Watery Plumes Into Space

Scientists made the surprising discovery by turning the powers of modern computing on 1997 data collected during the Galileo mission

Illustration of NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight).

Five Things to Know About NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars

This Saturday, the craft will launch on its mission to search for clues about the Red Planet’s interior

This visualization is based on the first three-dimensional numerical model of melting snowflakes in the atmosphere, developed by scientist Jussi Leinonen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Watch This 3D Snowflake Model Melt Over and Over Again

It’s not only mesmerizing, it could help researchers predict the hazards of wet snow

‘Staggering’ Damage to Florida’s Everglades Remains in the Wake of Hurricane Irma

Researchers found gaps in 40 percent of the forest canopy in aerial images taken before and after the storm

Trending Today

Five Things to Know About NASA’s New Planet-Hunting Satellite

TESS will scan the skies in search of the next crop of exoplanets

Artist's concept of a near-Earth object.

An Unexpected Asteroid Buzzed by Earth Last Sunday

The space rock is one of the largest ever to come in such close proximity to our planet

Four of the seven newly named Mercury's faculae lie in the Caloris basin, shown here.

Sci-Fi and Snakes Rule in New Official Names for Features on Pluto’s Largest Moon and Mercury

Stanley Kubrick and Octavia Butler are among the figures honored

Cool Finds

These Rare NASA Photos Were Saved From the Trash

The 1,500 press images up for sale cover the agency’s manned missions from 1961 to 1972

Trending Today

NASA Sends Human Sperm to the International Space Station

Astronauts will study how microgravity affects the motility of the little swimmers

New Research

The Center of the Milky Way May Be Chock-Full of Black Holes

Researchers spotted about a dozen black holes lurking at our galactic center—and there may be up to 10,000 more

An artist’s concept of the low-boom flight demonstrator outside the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company’s Skunk Works hangar in Palmdale, California.

Five Things to Know About NASA’s Supersonic X-Plane

The $247.5 million aircraft could revive supersonic flight for civilians

Awesome Con provided an opportunity for science fiction and real-life science to play off of one another. The Robot from Netflix's Lost in Space reboot (center) illustrates the former, while the NASA jacket of the con attendee on the right nods to the latter.

The Real Science Behind Your Favorite Nerd Culture at Awesome Con

Astrophysicists, vehicle technicians and biologists joined the party to bring cutting-edge research to fictional worlds

One of the clean rooms at the Johnson Space Center has been found to be contaminated with fungi.

NASA Clean Room Storing Meteorite Samples Is Contaminated With Fungi

Contamination of the not-so-clean room could meddle with results

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