Webb captures star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc

An international team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first…

The Milky Way’s eROSITA bubbles are large and distant

X-ray image of the eROSITA bubbles. Credit: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license In 2020, astronomers discovered a large hourglass-shaped structure in or near the center of our Milky Way…

NASA insists Boeing Starliner crew ‘not stranded’ on ISS

Starliner docked with the ISS on June 6 for what was meant to be roughly a week-long stay, but their departure has been pushed back multiple times because of thruster…

NASA astronauts will stay at the space station longer for more troubleshooting of Boeing capsule

This photo provided by NASA shows the Starliner spacecraft docked to the Harmony module of the International Space Station, orbiting 262 miles above Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, on June 13, 2024.…

With a new, incredibly precise instrument, researchers narrow search for dark energy

Dark energy — a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-increasing rate — was discovered 26 years ago, and ever since, scientists have been searching for a new…

Telltale greenhouse gases could signal alien activity

If aliens modified a planet in their solar system to make it warmer, we could tell. A new UC Riverside study identifies the artificial greenhouse gases that would be giveaways…

LLNL gamma-ray sensor has the best resolution

A gamma ray sensor built by LLNL scientists is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.  Credit:…

Frosty volcanoes discovered in Mars’s tropics

The frost sits atop the Tharsis volcanoes: the tallest volcanoes not only on Mars but in the Solar System. It was first seen by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), and…

Can’t stop won’t stop: Solar Orbiter shows the Sun raging on

The hyperactive sunspot region responsible for the beautiful auroras earlier in May was still alive and kicking when it rotated away from Earth’s view. Watching from the other side of…

The science behind splashdown—aerospace engineer explains how NASA and SpaceX get spacecraft safely back

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain For about 15 minutes on July 21, 1961, American astronaut Gus Grissom felt at the top of the world—and indeed he was. Grissom crewed the Liberty…