Science & Space
Science and spaceflight, from rocket launches and planetary exploration to astronomy, physics and discoveries that change our understanding of the world.
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This reading list brings together items from the sources selected for Science & Space. Open each item at its original source for the complete article, episode or video. This is a selection of current coverage, not a complete archive.
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Host Stars Shape Their Planetary Systems Into Two Families
New research draws a link between a host star and the characteristics of its planetary system. Higher mass stars create one family of systems, while lower mass stars create another. These results provide a new, more detailed template for understanding exoplanet systems.
Orionid, Taurid Meteors Haunt October Skies
Fall meteor season has begun. Late October not only sees dusk falling ever earlier as ghouls and goblins walk the Earth on Halloween, but it also sees the peak of two fine annual meteor showers kicking off Halloween season: the Orionid and Taurid meteor showers.
SPHEREx Just Took the Fingerprints of Failed Stars Across Our Cosmic Neighborhood
Brown dwarfs are the black (or brown?) sheep of astronomy. They’re too big to be considered a traditional gas planet, but they are too small to have started nuclear fusion and made the full transition to star-hood. They also change dramatically over time, cooling, shrinking, and spinning faster as they age.
The Perseverance Rover Reaches Another Milestone
NASA's Perseverance Rover has reached another milestone. It now holds the record for the longest distance travelled on another world, meaning Mars and Earth's Moon. It's all thanks the ingenuity behind AutoNav, it's hazard-detection driving system. It's a win for science, as more distance travelled means more scientific objectives are reached.
Astronomers Observe The Limb Darkening Effect On Nearby Stars
The edge of the Sun appears darker than its central region. This effect is known as limb darkening and tells us about the solar atmosphere. This same limb darkening effect has now been observed on several nearby stars and could help us improve our understanding of stellar atmospheres.
Astronomers Uncover More Intriguing Detail in an Ancient Supernova Remnant
When a supernova exploded in 1181, Chinese and Japanese sky-watchers recorded it. They couldn't have known what the object was, and why it appeared for six months then disappeared. But in our modern times, we know it was a supernova, and we've even, most likely, found its remnant. New observations reveal more detail than ever in the unusual and rare supernova remnant.
Chandrasekhar Placed A Limit On White Dwarfs, But A New Study Finds This Limit Is Not Absolute
The Chandrasekhar limit states that a white dwarf can be no larger than 1.4 solar masses. A new study demonstrates how highly magnetized white dwarfs could overcome that limit, and how such super-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs could form.
Curiosity Greets a Spectacular Dawn Sky on Mars
Mars is a planetary geologist’s paradise. NASA’s Curiosity rover drove that home recently, with a captivating panorama seen from the slopes of Mount Sharp. The image shows a stunning vista, and was not white-balance adjusted during processing, to show just what a viewer might really see at sunrise standing of Mars.
A Trip to Mars Could Break Your Heart - Literally
When astronauts first travel to Mars, or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet itself protects us from on its surface - radiation and weightlessness. Scientists already know both can have a profound impact on the human body, but just how much of one, and how long that impact can last, remain a mystery.
New Data from the Juno Spacecraft Reveals that Jupiter’s Has a Rippling, Wavy Magnetodisk
Using observations from NASA's Juno spacecraft, an international team led by Shandong University shows that Jupiter's magnetodisk is a rippling structure that rotates with the planet, contrary to what scientists previously thought.
Hypernovae May Be All Hype, No Nova
Astrophysicists think that hypernovae are the most powerful stellar explosions in the Universe. They're the most explosive type of core-collapse supernova. But the evidence for them is not voluminous, and new research pokes holes in it, pointing out that hypernovae may not actually exist.
A Red Dwarf is Taking its Time Eating a Brown Dwarf
Astronomers detected an unusual triangular light curve about 300 light years away. They were searching for Black Widow Binaries, where a dense neutron star eats its companion. But they found something different: an M dwarf slowly eating its binary companion brown dwarf.
ESA’s Hera Mission Targets Binary Asteroid Pair in November
In just one more month, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will make history. Moving at 12 kilometers per second versus Earth, the mission is about to rendezvous with the binary Dimorphos-Didymos asteroid pair. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into Dimorphos in 2022, and now Hera will provide a follow up view of the mission’s resulting handiwork.
Tiny Gold Nanogaps Could Crack the Chirality Puzzle
Looking for biosignatures across the solar system requires looking for asymmetry. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, are famously either “left-handed” (L) or “right-handed” (D). We know abiotic processes (i.e. those that create amino acids but don’t involve life) create a 50/50 mixture of the two types, which is called a racemic mixture. But life as we know it almost exclusively relies on left-handed amino acids to fold proteins and right-handed ones to construct nucleic acids.
Hubble Spots a Suspected Second-Generation Planet
Diligent sleuthing by astronomers has broken open a cold case in the data archive of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In a study published Monday in Nature Astronomy, researchers report uncovering a surprising chemical clue that indicates the white dwarf star HS 0209+0832 may host a second-generation planet.
Primordial Helium Further Confirms Our Understanding Of The Big Bang
Most helium in the Universe is primordial helium, formed during the Big Bang. But a fraction of helium was formed by long-dead stars. Distinguishing between the two allows astronomers to further confirm our observations of the Big Bang.
How Will Water Flow on the Moon?
Growing fresh food on the Moon is going to be crucial if astronauts there are ever going to eat anything other than freeze-dried rations. Since husbanding animals on the lunar surface is…difficult (to put it mildly), most mission planners believe that plants are the solution. But we still don’t entirely understand how one of the most fundamental materials to plant growth, water, operates under partial gravity.
Honda Wants to Put a Robotic Lab Assistant on Future Commercial Space Stations
As I’m writing this I’m able to stare out into my driveway at my trusty Honda Odyssey. Most of the public’s association with Honda is through their “mobility” products - i.e. their cars. But the company has an impressive track record of other technical achievements, not the least of which has been in robotics. Now, it’s teaming up with space infrastructure firm Redwire to develop an automated laboratory support system for use on future commercial space stations.
The Preliminary Lunar Science Report for Artemis II is Out!
Through photographs, spoken observations, drawings, and annotations, the Artemis II crew created a unique scientific record—one that is now available to the science community and the public for further study. Explore highlights here, and find the full suite of reports and select data resources at the bottom of the page.
Astronomers Detect Potential ‘Second Generation’ Planet Around Dying Stellar White Dwarf
Potential ‘Second generation’ planet detection around a dying stellar white dwarf opens a whole new chapter of exoplanetary science.
Stratospheric Balloon Telescope Peeks Above The Clouds At The Sun
There’s lots of things you can do with balloons. Children’s birthday parties come to mind, as do retirement parties. But you can also observe the Sun in unprecedented detail with one - or at least with a suite of equipment attached to a gondola floating beneath one. That’s what the SUNRISE III mission did back in 2024, and scientists have had time to compile a series of three scientific papers on the results from that mission, which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Most Distant FRB Tells The Story Of Its Origin
Astronomers use the Webb to study a distant fast radio burst and reveal clues as to the origin of these mysterious events.
A Student Finds Three Galaxies and Possibly Solves a Mystery
It’s not too often that a high school student-turned undergraduate gets three galaxies named after him, especially ones that are breaking the rules of star formation. Julian Shapiro, an astrophysics student at the University of California, Berkeley, found strange dwarf galaxies in the vicinity of the large spiral M101 while doing research into their star formation rates as a high school student. They’re now known as Shapiro I, II, and III.
Webb Observes “Extreme Debris Disks,” Providing a Window into the Early Solar System
In the early history of our solar system, scientists theorize that a Mars-sized object called Theia smashed into the infant Earth, creating the Earth-Moon system. Using Webb, astronomers are studying young star systems to learn more about the early Solar System's evolution.
To Win A Nobel Prize, Go To The Ends Of The Earth
Neutrinos are persnickety particles. We couldn't really detect neutrinos from deep space until Francis Halzen had a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning idea.
NASA Selects GIMLI to Search the Marius Lunar Pit for a Potential Lunar Base Site
NASA has selected a Planetary Science Institute-led proposal to investigate whether a potentially large underground cave extends beyond the opening of a lunar pit.
New Study Shows That Earth and Mars Had Different Origins
A surprising discovery suggests that Mars and Earth formed through different processes, which could help scientists confirm whether exoplanets are habitable.
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