His Lab Tested Cutting-Edge Spacecraft

Mason Peck, an aerospace engineer at Cornell, was trying to test innovative designs in spacecraft when a stop-work order hit.

News
If Your North Star Is Lost, New Techniques Can Point You South

The writer Tristan Gooley describes how a pair of familiar constellations can help a person navigate in darkness when other methods fail.

News
Two Comets Are Moving Into Your Night Skies in October: How to Watch

The comets A6 (Lemmon) and R2 (SWAN) are visitors from the chilly fringes of our solar system, and could even be visible at the same time.

News
What a Phosphine Signal in a Brown Dwarf’s Clouds Means for the Search for Life

The detection of the molecule phosphine in a brown dwarf’s atmosphere may help astronomers in their search for life elsewhere in the Milky Way.

News
NASA Artemis II Astronauts Aim to Make Space Great for All

In a preview of their flight, the crew of Artemis II, three Americans and a Canadian, struck a tone that veered away from the political currents of the moment.

News
NASA to Launch IMAP and Space Weather Missions on SpaceX Rocket: How to Watch

A NASA mission, IMAP, and two more spacecraft are heading to space atop a single SpaceX rocket.

News
NASA Picks 10 New Astronauts as Focus Shifts to the Moon and Mars

The 10 astronaut candidates, six of them women, will begin two years of training before becoming eligible for missions to low-Earth orbit and perhaps one day to the moon and Mars.

News
U.S. Is Losing Race to Return to Moon, Critics Say, Pointing at SpaceX

The company’s Starship rocket, which has suffered a series of recent test explosions, is still years away from being ready for the mission, former NASA executives say.

News
A Tiny Quasi-Moon is Following Earth Around the Sun

The object, the latest “quasi-moon” detected by astronomers, could be with us for almost another 60 years.

News
A Defender of Darkness in the Darkest Place on Earth

A Chilean astronomer has become dedicated to battling light pollution in the Atacama Desert and preserve what is considered the best place on Earth to study space.

News