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Outer Space

New asteroids are detected every day surrounding Earth, most of which are harmless.

Think Big

Sure, Earth Could Get Hit by a Deadly Asteroid—But There’s an Upside

Con: Devastating outer space impacts. Pro: Global unity!

Cool Finds

Check Out NASA’s Picks for This Year’s Best Images of Earth

From sunsets to city lights, the images capture the beauty of our ever-changing planet

Illustration of NASA's 2005 Deep Impact mission

Think Big

Scientist Warns We’re Unprepared for a Comet Strike

NASA researcher Joseph Nuth proposes that we build and store two spacecraft to deal with potential comet or asteroid strikes

A Geminid meteor streaks through the sky.

Trending Today

The Full Moon May Dull the Dazzle of this Year’s Geminid Meteor Shower—But You Can Still Catch a Glimpse

With just the right timing, stargazers could catch a few of the sparkling streaks

Artist's rendering of KITE

Cool Finds

Japan Testing “Space Tether” to Knock Junk Out of Orbit

The KITE experiment will use a half-mile long cable to guide some of the 500,000 chunks of space junk out of orbit

John Glenn, standing top right, looks at a model of the ship that took him to space with other astronauts from the Mercury space program in an undated photograph.

For a Larger-Than-Life Space Icon, John Glenn Was Remarkably Down-to-Earth

Friends and colleagues recall his abiding love for Smithsonian’s work, the history of spaceflight and peanut butter buckeyes

This collage of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows Saturn's northern hemisphere and rings as viewed with four different spectral filters. Each filter is sensitive to different wavelengths of light and reveals clouds and hazes at different altitudes.

New Research

Check Out New Pictures of Saturn From Cassini’s Latest Orbit

New images of the ringed planet herald the spacecraft’s demise

Cosmic dust particle collected from an urban gutter

Cool Finds

Scientists Discover Cosmic Dust in the Grime of City Gutters

Usually only found in remote locations, a dedicated amateur scientist combed through pounds of urban debris to recover these space specks

A visualization of Eyal Gever's #Laugh art project

Future of Space Exploration

This Artist Wants to Send a Sculpture of Your Laughs Into Space

#Laugh is on orbit to become the first art piece created in space

Two trainees work on repairs.

How to Experience a Mission to Mars (If You Still Want to Come Back)

Space Camp for adults? It’s definitely a thing

Cassini crosses Saturn's F ring once on each of its 20 Ring-Grazing Orbits, shown here in tan and lasting from late November 2016 to April 2017. Blue represents the extended solstice mission orbits, which precede the ring-grazing phase.

Trending Today

In Its Final Hurrah, Cassini Will Swoop Past Saturn’s Rings

The craft will take one last look at the ringed planet before diving into its depths

This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They found about as much frozen water as the volume of Lake Superior.

New Research

This Massive Martian Field of Ice Could Fill Lake Superior

The frosty deposit could be a lifeline for future human explorers on the Red Planet

The meteorite sample recovered near Perth in western Australia.

Cool Finds

Stargazers Help Track Down a Freshly Fallen Meteorite in Western Australia

A network of cameras and smartphone apps are helping Australian researchers hunt for space rocks

A map of some of the space junk surrounding the Earth.

Trending Today

Adopt a Piece of Space Junk and Learn About Its Dangers

An amusing project about a very real problem

Mercury's Great Valley is the dark blue stripe across the center of the image.

Life in the Cosmos

Mercury’s Newly-Discovered “Great Valley” Puts Earth’s Grand Canyon to Shame

The vast scar across the tiny planet is remarkable in itself—but it also reveals that Mercury may still be tectonically active

Jeff Bezos

American Ingenuity Awards

Is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin the Future of Space Exploration?

No one had ever launched, landed and relaunched a rocket into space until the company’s historic achievement

Sarah Parcak

American Ingenuity Awards

Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak Uses Satellites to Uncover Ancient Egyptian Ruins

The Indiana Jones of low Earth orbit harnesses 21st-century technology to uncover long-buried treasures

LIGO's founding fathers, from left: Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish. Not pictured: Ronald Drever

American Ingenuity Awards

Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves

This year, the geniuses behind LIGO announced that they had finally found what Albert Einstein had predicted a century ago

Sputnik Planitia is a 325,000-square-mile, ice-covered basin on Pluto.

How the Pull of an Icy “Heart” Sent Pluto’s Poles Wandering

Using New Horizons data, scientists determine that the erstwhile planet has a more dynamic past than we thought

Behold: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, located in the Atacama Desert, is the product of a 20-year global effort by Europe, North America, and East Asia

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