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Outer Space

The Unified Geologic Map of the Moon, showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right).

Gorgeous New Map of the Moon Is Most Detailed to Date

The rendering builds on decades of data that dates back to the Apollo missions, which happened some fifty years ago

For Earth Day, NASA and Lego challenged families to build models of planets as a way to learn through play.

Education During Coronavirus

NASA and Lego Host ‘Build a Planet’ Challenge

The event was part of the company’s week of #LetsBuildTogether challenges

On April 24, 1991—a year after it was launched into space—Hubble snapped a shot of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant, a relic of a star that exploded in a massive cataclysm about 15,000 years ago.

Education During Coronavirus

This NASA Website Shows What the Hubble Telescope Saw on Your Birthday

The snazzy search is part of the telescope’s 30th anniversary celebration

Artist's conception of SN2016aps, a supernova that was brighter and released more energy than any other ever observed by astronomers.

New Research

Astronomers Spy Brightest Supernova Ever Seen

A star 100-times more massive than the sun exploded with 10-times more energy than a normal-sized supernova

An artist's impression of 'Oumuamua, first spotted in 2017.

Scientists Suggest New Origin Story for ‘Oumuamua, Our Solar System’s First Interstellar Visitor

Perhaps the cigar-shaped object is a shard from a shredded planetary body, a computer simulation suggests

Danish physician Nadja Albertsen spent a year at Concordia Research Station in Antarctica.

Covid-19

Ten Tips From Scientists Who Have Spent Months in Isolation

Find a hobby, for starters, and don’t forget the mission, say scientists who have worked at remote research stations

Hayabusa2 deployed a camera to film the plume of regolith thrown up by the impact.

New Research

Japan’s Experiment to Calculate an Asteroid’s Age Was a Smashing Success

The spacecraft Hayabusa2 hurled a four-pound copper ball toward the asteroid’s surface at about 4,500 miles an hour to create an artificial crater

The Vatican Museums (pictured here), the Anne Frank House and the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City are among the many cultural institutions with online offerings.

Virtual Travel

Ten Museums You Can Virtually Visit

Museums are closing their doors amid the coronavirus crisis, but many offer digital exhibitions visitors can browse from the comfort of home

The EVA of Astronauts James Irwin, or Apollo XV EVA, Pierre Mion.

I Was Among the Lucky Few to Walk in Space

On July 31, 1971, Al Worden performed the first deep-space extra-vehicular activity. “No one in all of history” saw what he saw that day

None

Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit Was Made by a Bra Manufacturer

This wearable spacecraft let humans take one giant leap away from Earth

Jupiter's moon Europa may have the ingredients necessary for hosting life: liquid water, an energy source and organic compounds.

We’re Better Equipped to Find Extraterrestrial Life Now Than Ever Before

Astronomers have more places to look for signs of intelligent life and more advanced tools to find it

Graphic illustrating the MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars.

Ten Trends That Will Shape Science in the Decade Ahead

Medicine gets trippy, solar takes over, and humanity—finally, maybe—goes back to the moon

An artist's concept of the solar system

Where Will NASA Explore Next? Here Are the Four Shortlisted Missions

Targets include Venus, Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s moon Triton

The asteroid Pallas, imaged by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope

The Most Cratered Object in the Asteroid Belt Looks Like a Golf Ball

Pallas’s odd orbit sends it crashing through the asteroid belt, colliding with other objects along the way

The left lobe of Pluto's distinctive heart is called Sputnik Planitia, covered with craterless plains of frozen nitrogen that vaporize each day.

New Research

Pluto Has a Nitrogen Heartbeat

Nitrogen on the dwarf planet’s glacial ‘heart’ becomes vapor each day and freezes each night

In the heart of a new dark matter detector, LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), a 5-foot-tall detector filled with 10 tons of liquid xenon, will search for hypothetical dark matter particles to produce flashes of light as they traverse the detector.

New Generation of Dark Matter Experiments Gear Up to Search for Elusive Particle

Deep underground, in abandoned gold and nickel mines, vats of liquid xenon and silicon germanium crystals will be tuned to detect invisible matter

The telescope will decommission on January 30 after uncovering the some of the deepest corners of the universe.

Spitzer Space Telescope Ends Operations After Scanning the Cosmos for 16 Years

Looking back on the groundbreaking discoveries of NASA’s little telescope that could

A new type of aurora, called auroral dunes, produces horizontal, undulating stripes of green that resemble mounds of sand on a beach.

A New Type of Aurora Ripples Across the Sky in Horizontal Green ‘Dunes’

Originally observed by citizen scientists, the unusual light show might help researchers better understand a poorly studied layer of the atmosphere

Félicette, a former stray who was sent into space by French researchers in 1963, now has a bronze statue in her honor at France's International Space University.

Félicette, the First Cat in Space, Finally Gets a Memorial

Last month, a team unveiled a bronze statue honoring the feline, who launched on a suborbital mission in 1963

Luca Parmitano and Christina Koch with milk and a cookie.

The First Cookies Baked in Space Have Returned to Earth

They took up to 130 minutes to bake, but the cookies could help scientists make future space missions a little more palatable

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