You've know that the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered HUNDREDS of new planets outside our solar system -- but how does it find them? And how do scientists tell the real planets from the celestial fake-outs? It involves a lot of patient searching -- and math!
Caitlin Hofmeister walks you through NASA's planned Asteroid Retrieval Mission, which aims to capture a space-rock and put it in lunar orbit for study -- all by 2025!
Ever wonder what seasons are like on other planets? Astronomers are beginning to find out, and SciShow Space explains how they know, what causes the change in seasons, and what "summer" might mean on distant worlds.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected a huge ocean under the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. But how? And what does it really mean? Hank lays out the data -- straight from space to your brain!
Pluto's not a planet. We're sorry, but we think it's time you move on. If you've gone through all your breakup music and Meg Ryan movies, and you still can't get over it, then SciShow Space will get out the ice cream, cuddle up with you on the couch, and talk about how this could have happened.
Caitlin serves up the latest in space-science news, this week featuring developments in missions dedicated to sampling asteroids, detecting exomoons, and solving the mysteries of the moon.
SciShow Space explains how different experts define our the boundaries of our solar system and why it's way more complicated (and interesting) than it sounds.
Caitlin Hofmeister gives you the latest news from around the universe, including Kepler's latest exoplanet discovery, an upcoming solar eclipse, and a breathtaking image from Hubble.
SciShow Space takes you to the moon! Learn about the competing theories about how Earth's closest neighbor formed.
SciShow Space gives you the latest in Space News, including fascinating facts about the latest visitors to the ISS, how to spot the Eta Aquarids meteor shower, and a new discovery in our own celestial neighborhood.
Reid Reimers expands your mind with an explanation of white holes -- celestial objects that almost definitely are not real things that can be found in nature. Except, we might have actually seen one.
Caitlin delivers the latest developments from around the universe, including Curiosity's latest drill, the low-down on that "secret" space plane, and the dimmest galaxy ever detected.
Reid Reimers explains one of the often-overlooked technologies that humans need to live in, and explore, space: space suits. Learn about the hundred-year history of the pressurized suit, and see what the future of space couture might look like.
SciShow Space takes you inside solar flares, and how we've managed to get the best look at one yet, along with news about a new, Web-based simulation of the earliest days of the universe that you can explore yourself!
Buckle up for a trip to the asteroid belt -- though it's not nearly as dangerous out there as you might think. But there's a LOT waiting to be discovered, including some crucial clues about the formation of the solar system itself.
SciShow Space shares the latest news from around the universe, including a wrap-up of the experiments conducted in the last space station mission, a test of a new "flying saucer" device from NASA, and new life for our old friend, the Kepler Space Telescope!
SciShow explains the science of detecting exoplanets -- planets in orbit around distant stars -- and how a new observatory being built in California may open up whole new worlds to us, literally!
SciShow Space shares the latest news from the around the universe, including the first supernova observed in real time, and Internet service on the moon. Finally!
Learn more about gravitational lensing with host Caitlin Hofmeister.
SciShow Space gives you the latest news from around the universe, including the discovery of a new class of exoplanet dubbed a "mega-Earth," and a tour of SpaceX's new crewed vehicle, the Dragon V2.
SciShow Space shares four wonderful things that you probably use every day, all made possible by NASA technology.
SciShow Space shares the latest news from around the universe, including the first observation of a star-within-a-star, and the debut image from the newest telescope to be enlisted in the hunt for alien worlds.
Learn about the Oort Cloud with host Reid Reimers on this episode of SciShow Space!
SciShow Space News tells you about NASA's latest launch -- the first mission dedicated to measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- and gives you a primer on what the June solstice really is!
SciShow Space takes to you a world where the night is always dark, the tides are paltry -- and the days are only 8 hours long. See how different Earth would be if there were no moon!
There's something out there SO massive that it's pulling on every object within hundreds of millions of light years. But we can't see it! So what DO we know? Today on SciShow Space, Reid Reimers tells us more about the Great Attractor.
Join Caitlin Hoffmeister in this episode of SciShow Space News as we explore the universe!
SciShow Space takes you into Low Earth Orbit to explain how artificial satellites get up there and stay there -- at least for a while.
SciShow News gives you some wet and weird developments from around the solar system, including new insights about what liquid lurks under the surface of Titan, and a sweaty comet that's been spotted on its way toward the sun.
Meet one of the newest celestial bodies to be discovered: rogue planets, worlds that hurtle around the galaxy without any parent star. Caitlin Hofmeister explains how we found them, and where we think they might have come from.
SciShow Space celebrates the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing by highlighting just four of the most important things we learned from the Apollo 11 mission.
SciShow Space explores the origins of Earthquakes that aren't on Earth. Moonquakes and Marsquakes can happen, too!
SciShow Space preps you for the Delta Aquarids, a meteor shower, and explains what makes them so unique. Plus, join “aquanauts” on one of NASA’s least-known missions, a nine-day tour in its NEEMO undersea laboratory.
SciShow Space tackles a viewer question: Is the Earth getting heavier? The answers -- there’s actually more than one -- may surprise you!
SciShow Space shares the latest news from space research, including the first definitive detection of water on an exoplanet, and a new theory for how we should search for alien civilizations.
So how do astronauts manage to pee and poop in microgravity? And what happens to all of their waste? Do you really want to know? If you do, the answers are inside!
SciShow Space shares the latest news from around the universe, including new details about our next mission to Mars, and a study that predicts a catastrophic solar storm may be more likely than we thought.
SciShow Space takes you on a tour of Mercury, the sun’s closest friend, where a year is just a day and half long, and the surface holds many surprises -- like ice!
In this episode of SciShow Space News, Hank details the work of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. He also explains the new discoveries of Jupiter's moon Io.
All of humanity likely saw it, a brilliant supernova that lit up the daytime sky in 1054. But 960 years later, there’s still a lot we don't quite understand about the famous celestial phenomenon.
SciShow Space shares the latest developments from around the universe, including news about the first material ever collected from outside the solar system, and a backyard astronomers’ guide to two upcoming planetary conjunctions.
SciShow Space takes you behind the scenes of astronaut training, to show how crew members and their equipment are tested in microgravity, all while never having to leave Earth.
SciShow explores two celestial mysteries: the origins of a meteorite that crashed into a house in California, and who’s releasing chemicals into the atmosphere that were banned more than 25 years ago?
SciShow Space takes you to the smallest star in the universe, and explains how astronomers figured out that’s what it was!
SciShow Space News shares the latest developments from around the universe, including NASA’s plan to build the world’s most powerful rocket, and the fate of Russian geckos sent to have sex in space.
Carl Sagan famously observed that we are all made of “star stuff.” But what does that mean? And how much of you is really made of dead stars? SciShow Space explains!
SciShow Space shares the latest news from around the universe, including new insights into the giant supercluster of galaxies that we call home, and the first “data baby” from Rosetta’s rendezvous with a comet.
SciShow Space takes you on a tour of Venus, a world with such an extreme environment that you might call it “Earth’s evil twin.”
SciShow Space News shares the latest developments from around the universe, including the Curiosity’s arrival at its final destination, and new insights into what clues we should really be looking for in our search for alien life.
SciShow Space gives you a blow by blow account of what’s going to happen to the sun -- and Earth.
SciShow Space News reveals two weird experiments in human spaceflight: one showed us what it really feels like to walk on the moon, the other put ordinary people through space flight simulation to see how they did. Find out inside!
Planetary alignments: They’re the favorite astronomical scenario of kooks, con artists, and Hollywood producers everywhere. But has it ever happened? And what would it do to Earth if it did?
SciShow Space News shares the latest developments from around the universe, including the discovery of water vapor on a new “exo-Neptune,” and cyanide found in the clouds where stars are born.
Welcome to SciShow Space! In this episode Caitlin Hofmeister will talk about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, one of the most influential women in astronomy!
We just mapped out 80% of our earth and gave the ISS a tuneup! Hank Green explains what is going on in this episode of SciShow Space News!
SciShow Space takes you through perhaps the scariest part of every space mission -- re-entry. How do astronauts survive the turbulent return to Earth’s atmosphere? Math, y’all!
This week, a new comet will make its first visit to the inner Solar System, just barely missing Mars (we hope). SciShow Space News takes you there!
How do spacecraft survive the enormous heat and crushing g’s of re-entry? And why don’t astronauts actually land in rockets, like they do in cartoons and comic books? SciShow Space explains!
SciShow Space News takes you to the solar system’s own Death Star -- Saturn’s moon Mimas, where something mysterious is going on. Plus, we share a stunning new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope that holds a few surprises!
SciShow Space reveals the discovery of a whole new kind of supernova, and the undead stars they leave behind.
SciShow Space News gives you a whiff of comet 67P, and takes you through a record-breaking skydive from an altitude five times the height of Mount Everest.
SciShow Space describes a new phenomenon that might be out there: Stars made entirely out of metal. But it’s not quite what it sounds like!
SciShow Space News looks into two recent rocket failures over U.S. soil, exploring possible causes and sizing up the risks of spaceflight since humans first started reaching for the stars.
Are there ways to terraform Mars -- that is, make it habitable for humans? Some scientists think so. They have big plans, but they also face some big obstacles.
SciShow Space News gives you the update of the historic mission that has, for the first time ever, landed a spacecraft on the surface of a comet!
Get to know Robert Goddard, one of the original rocket scientists!
SciShow Space News explains what happened to Philae, the first spacecraft on the surface of a comet, and shares what scientists say about the future of the mission.
SciShow Space explores new theories about the timing of the development of life on Earth, and elsewhere in the universe.
On Thursday, December 4th, NASA will conduct the first test flight of its new deep space crew vehicle, going farther than any passenger vehicle has in over 40 years. Get ready to meet Orion!
About 1200 years ago, Earth may have experienced one of the rarest and most powerful cosmic events a planet can be exposed to: a gamma-ray burst. If it did, well, let’s just say that we, as living things on Earth, are lucky it wasn’t worse.
If you look closely enough, you’ll see the night sky is actually a little green. SciShow Space explains the science behind the phenomenon known as airglow.
SciShow Space News takes you step by step through the first voyage of the Orion spacecraft.
The American space program wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for the contributions of a scientist who was also a former Nazi. Learn about the life and work of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.
SciShow Space walks you through this week’s upcoming nail-biter: SpaceX’s attempt to land a reusable rocket on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
SciShow Space explores the supermassive black hole spinning at the center of our galaxy, and how we’ve all learned to live with it in harmony.
Why are we sending a rocket into the sun? SciShow Space explains the why, what and how of Solar Probe Plus, a mission that’ll give us our closest look yet at our nearest star.
SciShow Space brings you NEWS FROM THE FUTURE, with details about the space missions to look forward to in 2015.
The sun may have thousands of stellar siblings, many of them probably just like it, elsewhere in the galaxy. Find out how astronomers are looking for them, and learn about a match that could be our star’s long-lost sibling!
SciShow Space starts the year off with a bang, and the discovery of 8 Earth-like planets, two of which may be the most promising candidates yet for harboring life.
Just how long could you survive on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit? Find out what it’d be like to stand on the surface of Mars, if you forgot to pack properly.
This week in space news, a new makeover for one of the Hubble Telescope’s most famous images, and tips on spotting Comet Lovejoy in the night sky.
Learn about hypergiant stars -- stars that make the sun look ridiculously tiny.
This week in SciShow Space News we bring you the latest on what to expect from NASA's New Horizons deep space mission and what asteroids to watch for in the coming years!
Most people have never heard of him. But Soviet scientist Sergei Korolev quietly developed the revolutionary rocket technology that we still use today.
SciShow News serves up the latest pictures from Comet 67-P, that media darling, and the discovery of what may be the oldest, rocky Earth-like worlds yet found.
Astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko will soon undertake a historic, record-breaking mission: to live in space for an entire year. And scientists will have some extra help studying the effects of this extended stay on the astronauts -- Kelly’s twin brother Mark!
SciShow Space explores the latest mission to search for extraterrestrial life, and the mission of two tiny satellites that aims to make space travel safer.
Did you know the moon has a tail? No one did, until 1998, and we’ve been trying to figure it out ever since.
SciShow Space News revisits one of the biggest (potential) astronomical discoveries of 2014, one that promised to revolutionize our understanding of the formation of the universe. Turns out, we’re not quite there yet.
Did you know the Soviet Union had its own Space Shuttle? Learn all about the Buran, what happened to it, and what innovations set it apart from its NASA counterpart.
SciShow Space News gives you the latest from a batch of experiments on the Space Station, a new mission to forecast space weather, and a guide to this year’s conjunction of Mars and Venus!
Eta Carinae A, a star that briefly held the title of the second-brightest star in the sky, has been dazzling astronomers for centuries. Learn more about this type of supermassive, mega-luminous star, known as a Luminous Blue Variable.
New discoveries into two weird things that may have played havoc with the ancient solar system: dark matter and a wandering star.
After Hubble and Webb, what’s the future of space telescopes? Two ideas in planning stages right now involve the space-age versions of umbrellas and glitter.
SciShow Space takes you to a distant, ancient black hole that … really shouldn’t be, and psyches you up for the Dawn spacecraft’s final approach to Ceres!
Tiny remnants of extreme nuclear reactions in space are flying through your body right now. And astronomers are hunting them to learn more about some of the most energetic and violent objects in the universe.
This week, an update on Dawn’s rendezvous with Ceres, a changing of the guard on the ISS, and a viewer’s guide to this year’s solar eclipse!
For astronauts, dust is no joke. On the moon and Mars, dust isn’t at all like the stuff under your bed. It can be poisonous, corrosive, even made of razor-sharp glass. So future astronauts are going to need more than a dust buster to get their jobs done.
Which is a bigger deal to you? The discovery that there’s probably more water on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede than all the oceans on Earth? Or the fact that you can now help NASA find asteroids? Learn about both, then decide for yourself!
When the Cold Atom Laboratory launches to the International Space Station in 2016, it will become the coldest spot in the universe. Learn how scientists are going to get closer than ever to absolute zero -- and why they want to.
Two astronauts are about to embark on the One Year Mission which can help us understand more about the long-term effects of being in space, and there is an upcoming total lunar eclipse (the shortest one this century)!
There’s a massive cloud in the center of our galaxy, and it’s full of alcohol. Party in the Milky Way! But how did it get there? And what does it have to do with the search for life elsewhere in the universe? SciShow Space explains!
SciShow Space is one year old! And we’re celebrating by talking about new plans for a mission we told you about in our very first episode of SciShow News!
If you could pilot a spaceship into Jupiter and Saturn, would you ever hit anything solid? And what’s it like in there? SciShow Space takes you on a tour of the two biggest gas giants in the solar system.
This week, some rather confusing news from the Moon, and details about how ordinary folks like you helped classify 2 million celestial objects in just five days!
Get to know Olympus Mons on Mars, the biggest volcano in the solar system, and find out why a planet that’s smaller than Earth has volcanoes that are bigger than ours!
Mars might be full of salty liquid water! Plus, a guide to the upcoming Lyrids meteor shower.
Did you grow up thinking there were nine planets in the solar system? You might have been right all along! Today we discuss the possibility of distant worlds in our solar system.
SciShow Space News explains two of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most important discoveries, and why the MESSENGER probe is about to crash into Mercury.
In 2007, Hanny van Arkel noticed a blue blob next to a galaxy. Eight years later, scientists are still trying to figure out how it got there.
For the first time, astronomers have detected the light coming from an exoplanet. SciShow Space News explains how they did it, and why it was so difficult in the first place.
In five billion years, the Sun’s going to evolve into a red giant. That’s bad news for Earth, but exciting for some of the worlds a little farther out.
SciShow Space News explains how we lost track of a resupply mission, explores Pluto’s newfound ice caps, and helps you find Mercury.
Not all of the objects in the solar system are named after Greek and Roman gods -- some are named after literary figures, movie stars, and don’t get us started on what people think Earth is really called.
Join us for a trip into the SciShow Space News Debunker, where we explore the rumors that NASA has created a warp drive.
It’s Jupiter’s beauty mark — but do you know where the Great Red Spot came from, or how long it’s been there, or how long it’ll continue to exist? Well, neither do scientists, really.
This week on SciShow Space News, we finally find out what’s causing those dark lines on Europa. Plus, learn how to become space-famous!
Plenty of other planets in the Solar System have rings. So why not Earth?
This week on SciShow Space News, we’re learning more about the side effects of space travel… from mice. Plus, we explore the most luminous galaxy!
Sound can’t actually travel through a vacuum like space, but scientists have learned that there’s still plenty to hear.
NASA has announced the scientific instruments for the Europa Clipper mission, and Cassini has passed Hyperion, the so-called “spongy moon,” for the last time.
Before you take your relationship with space to a new level by getting a telescope, find out what you really need to make the most of your summer nights staring at the sky.
Their return was delayed for a while, but three ISS crew members are finally home. Plus, engineers have started assembling the Giant Magellan Telescope!
Join SciShow Space as we complete our tour of the Solar System planets with the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.
The Philae lander is awake! And it’s sending us data straight from Comet 67P!
NASA’s looking to send a giant robotic space eel to explore Europa, and a submarine to Titan. Let’s go for a swim!
Dawn is spiraling in for a closer look at Ceres, and researchers have discovered the best evidence yet for active volcanoes on Venus. Plus, check out Venus and Jupiter right next to each other in the sky!
Celebrate Asteroid Day by learning about the 3 biggest collisions that Earth has experienced with celestial objects.
An ISS-bound rocket exploded on Sunday, and New Horizons has a tough job finding Pluto.
Before you head out on your next stargazing adventure, SciShow Space has some tips for you.
New Horizons went into safe mode and lost a few days of science observations. And there seems to be some confusion over whether there are aliens on Comet 67P.
At least some advanced civilizations might be producing tons of waste heat by now. And researchers are looking for them.
The record for the fastest thing ever created by humans is a tie between the Helios 2 probe… and a manhole cover.
New Horizons is teaching us all about Pluto! And it’s definitely not what we were expecting.
There’s basically a hole in the universe -- a region where there’s much less matter than there should be. And we don’t know why it’s there.
Firefly takes place in an incredibly complicated star system. But it probably couldn’t exist, because physics.
According to some of the latest New Horizons data, Pluto’s got flowing nitrogen ice and only half the atmosphere it had two years ago. Plus, the latest batch of exoplanets includes a world that’s a lot like Earth... probably.
We've seen this done in movies right? Well, why don't spaceships have this technology?
This week on SciShow Space News, a new set of studies is teaching us all about Comet 67P. And the Perseids meteor shower is coming up!
In the 1970s, astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake developed the first messages intentionally sent out of our solar system. But how do you describe yourself to beings who have no concept of life on Earth?
Astronauts ate some space-grown lettuce, and astronomers discovered a ring of galaxies that’s so big it defies the laws of physics.
A backyard astronomer holds the world record for most supernovas found by searching manually. He’s memorized what over a thousand galaxies look like.
This week on SciShow Space News, Cassini visited Saturn’s moon Dione for the last time, and two little shepherd moons may have helped form some of Saturn’s rings.
NASA recently sponsored new research into turning human waste into useful things, like food and plastic. And it might be used on long-term spaceflight someday.
This week on SciShow Space News, researchers have figured out which gas drives fire fountain eruptions on the Moon. And you can send a message or your name to the Moon or Mars!
In the early days of spaceflight, if NASA needed to plot a rocket’s path or confirm a computer’s calculations, they knew who to ask: Katherine Johnson.
Stephen Hawking recently announced that he’d come up with an answer to one of the biggest questions in physics. But it’ll probably be a while before we know exactly what it is.
Earlier this year, NASA put out a call for names for features on Pluto and its moons based on an established set of rules. Now, it’s finally time to put those names on the map.
This week on SciShow Space News, astronauts had to take the scenic route to the ISS because of some space debris. And this month, you might get to see two eclipses: a solar eclipse, and a rare supermoon eclipse.
What if an advanced civilization ran out of room to grow on their home planet? Their best bet might be to build settlements in space, so they could capture more of their star’s energy.
Elon Musk thinks that we can make Mars habitable by nuking it. But would that really work?
Space missions are difficult. Reid describes three epic space mission fails!
This week on SciShow Space News, Saturn’s moon Enceladus probably has a giant ocean covering the entire world. And the year-long mission to the International Space Station just hit its halfway point!
Find out what kinds of things are lurking near the center of our galaxy!
This week on SciShow Space News, photos of Comet 67P and Pluto are helping us solve old mysteries and creating some new ones.
Deep in an archive in Columbus, Ohio, there’s a slip of paper with a bunch of random-looking letters and numbers printed on it called the ‘Wow’ signal.
NASA just announced the five finalists for the next Discovery missions. It looks like we’ll be sending probes to Venus, studying asteroids, or both!
Humans are full of microbes. Humans also went to the Moon. Does that mean we left colonies over there?
Ancient Mars had a lot of water! This week on SciShow Space News, scientists analyzed the Curiosity rover’s data on the rocks in Gale Crater, using it to learn more about what the lakes and rivers on olden-day Mars might have looked like.
Most of the world believed that Earth was the center of the universe for a really long time. Then a few scientists decided to take a closer look.
The Kepler space telescope found a star that randomly gets really dim, and some people are suggesting the star’s being blocked by a huge alien structure. It’s… probably not aliens, though.
Humans are great at understanding medium-sized things, like how far the supermarket is from your house, or how to find the bathroom in the dark. But imagining distances in light-years is a lot harder -- so you’ll have to use a trick or two.
Scientists studying Comets 67P and Lovejoy have discovered oxygen, alcohol, and the building block of sugar. Sounds like a regular Friday night on earth, but it’s the first time we’ve found any of these things on a comet.
When scientists are planning missions, they sometimes have to take into account the fact that the light from the Sun pushes on the spacecraft. But with solar sails, they can also use that pressure to propel the craft along.
Carl Sagan predicted some amazing things including the aftermath of nuclear war.
Learn about what might be one of the most important exoplanets we've discovered yet, and what you need to apply to become an astronaut!
You might have done it accidentally or intentionally but one thing is clear: Don't stare at the the sun! Hank Green explains why.
Astronomer Jean-Luc Margot has come up with a new definition for planets that may help us categorize worlds outside of the solar system, and we may have also discovered a new dwarf planet within the solar system!
Most stars orbit the center of the galaxy. Some stars don't. Learn what scientists think is going on, with Reid Reimers!
Will Mars have a ring around it? Hank Green explains in this episode of Scishow Space News!
Join SciShow Space as we explore Neptune's largest moon, Triton. It's kind of a weird place and may even have liquid water!
Akatsuki missed Venus once, but with a little ingenuity and its secondary engines, it's heading back on December 7th!
Get your gasmasks ready because we’re taking a trip to Titan! Reid Reimers tells us all about the mysterious moon.
Those bright spots on Ceres? We've got some new insight into what they might be! Also, the Geminids meteor shower is coming up and will peak on December 13-14.
Although science has provided astounding insights into the origins of the universe, we're still not quite sure what happened in those very first few moments.
Click here to find out more about “New Planets Found!” and “SUPER EARTH Orbiting Our Sun!”. Ignore the clickbait...Hank Green explains what might have been found in this episode of SciShow Space.
We've talked about a lot of extreme environments in the solar system, but the sun just might be the MOST extreme! Join SciShow as we dive a little deeper into our friendly neighborhood star.
Is the universe expanding? About a hundred years ago astronomers made a discovery that helped us unravel the mystery of the history of the universe!
Let's talk about some of the awesome stuff that happened in 2015! Caitlin Hofmeister tells us all about some pretty nifty black holes and the biggest rocket created by NASA.
We all know that the universe is mind-bogglingly gigantic, but how *exactly* mind-bogglingly gigantic is it?
2016 was a lot of things, but for astronomers, it meant the discovery of some of the farthest, faintest, and youngest objects in the universe we've seen yet.
Four rocky inner planets and four gaseous outer planets - makes sense, right? But when astronomers turned their eyes to planets beyond our star system they found out that many systems are set up differently. Why?
We bring you a few upcoming missions that will be testing technology for future asteroid prospecting, trying to find more exoplanets, and continuing China's quest for a crewed moon mission.
The information contained in this video may shock you!
With two new missions set by NASA, we hope to learn so much more of the asteroids surrounding Jupiter's orbit and the origin of our moon!
May 23rd, 1967 could have been the beginning of the end - all thanks to the sun.
What was that giant swoop on Venus? And SpaceX continues to move forward.
If the universe is so vast and full of stars, why is the night sky dark?
The universe gets a little weirder, and more dangerous, every time we study it. Understanding space weather, which can mess with our communications systems, will take strategic planning to monitor.
The universe is a big place full of galaxies that we've only begun to study. SciShow Space presents 3 of the strangest ones we've found so far.
Boeing has developed a snazzy new spacesuit and a couple studies give us clues about the history of Earth and the moon!
How do we know what the Milky Way looks like if we've never been outside of it?
Scientists have known the outside of the sun spins slower than the inside for a while, but they didn't know why until recently.
Some astronauts have reported the same specific symptoms: they see mysterious flashes of light out of the corner of their eyes. What causes those bizarre phenomena, and how does it affect astronauts?
NASA has proposed a mission that would land on Europa to search for signs of life & we've learned something sad about one of our neighbors, Proxima b.
Reid describes how pigeons and bird poop helped prove the Big Bang!
Between the new, potentially Earth-like planets, organic molecules on Ceres, and SpaceX's successful launch, it's been quite a week in space!
Hint: It's not your collection of awesome refrigerator magnets!
But maybe don't bust out the moisture farm equipment just yet!
The night sky is about to look a little different, but that's nothing new!
SpaceX is spearheading space travel for consumers and one day hopes to take people to the moon!
Getting our hands on a few moon rocks radically changed our understanding of the solar system!
You might not want to sign up for the Enceladus Ice Hockey League... And some researchers have an idea that might make the Big Bang model more accurate!
Move over Hubble, ALMA sees what you can't!
The ESA is working on a 'fresh-squeezed' spacecraft that will explore Jupiter's moons, and the New Horizons team makes a case for Pluto (and many others)!
Based on what we think we know about the universe these stars really shouldn't exist, but they do!
Black holes are a wondrous force of the universe! Hank explains how we found a supermassive rogue black hole & how DNA behaves in space!
Crashing satellites into the moon can be fun AND educational!
This week SpaceX accomplished a first in the history of spaceflight: They reused a rocket big enough to send things into orbit!
In the early 1960s, Richard Feynman was quoted as saying that Earth's center should be a day or two younger than its surface. 50 years later, scientists re-did the math.
We may soon have a direct image of a black hole, and we have the first detection of an atmosphere on an Earth-sized exoplanet!
You might think we’ve already found every kind of star by now, but astronomers think there are more that should hypothetically exist!
These days, it seems like we’re finding water all over the solar system. Still, it takes a lot more than a little H2O to support life.
The solar system is full of strange things. But these three moons are especially strange, and kind of ... ugly.
The International Space Station might be getting a new neighbor because China has big plans for their future in space!!
Astronomers still aren't sure about how our solar system might have formed, but they have simulations to help them get closer to the answer!
The Cassini probe is getting more dangerous assignments as its mission nears its end, and the sun's surface may be simpler than we once thought.
You might have realized that lots of ground-based telescopes are located in Hawaii...but why? It's not just for the beautiful sunsets.
ESA’s newest printer at the DLR German Aerospace Center in Cologne, is designing a way to print bricks for a moon base.
Curiosity's 23-month-long mission is already approaching the 5-year-mark! How much longer can we hope it will last?
Exoplanets are being discovered in the habitable zone to sustain life as we know it. Could water be found on the closest exoplanet to us?
NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program has funded a slew of new space mission concepts! Which one is your favorite?
Tabby's star is at it again. Could it be aliens this time!? Also, astronomers have discovered a planet with the density of styrofoam!
Scientists are still working on theories that might help explain what the vast majority of our universe is made of.
Astronomers have announced the Juno space probe’s first findings from Jupiter!
Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, seemed too good to be true when they were first created, and before long astronomers studying Venus' atmosphere discovered what could go wrong with this "miracle molecule."
NASA is launching a mission to send a probe into the sun, and it's the first to be named after a living scientist: Eugene Parker and the Parker Solar Probe! Astronomers have found another hot topic, and it's the hottest planet we've ever seen at 4300°C!
One of Saturn's moons looks a lot like an infamous planet-destroying battle station from science fiction, but astronomers have some very real theories about the complex crater that gives Mimas its unique feature.
Samples from the Curiosity rover suggest that Mars had a potentially habitable lake in its past, and gravitational lensing has helped scientists weigh a star!
Scientists conduct some pretty cool research experiments for Mars here on Earth. These terrestrial analogues have revealed some incredible discoveries!
Researchers published a paper last month, exploring the possibility that our sun might have once had a stellar twin! Could our solar system have once been a binary, or even a multi-star system?
The Apollo 1 fire was a tragedy and a huge wake-up call for NASA, causing them to get much more serious about their safety procedures and technology, and also changed their attitude towards spaceflight in general.
The Dawn spacecraft has been exploring the two largest objects in the asteroid belt since 2007, and here's what we've learned so far!
Vera Rubin graphed the rotation curves of galaxies, helping astronomers better understand the accelerated orbits of stars on the outskirts of galaxies. Her life's work generated some of the first solid evidence for dark matter in the universe.
A new paper that borrows old astrological data from the Voyager 2 probe has used brand-new computer simulations to find some new weird data about Uranus’s magnetic field. Another paper has new information about our galaxy’s fastest stars, called hypervelocity stars.
Astronomers have used a few different methods to detect exoplanets, and improved telescopes are increasing the rate of discovery. But is it possible that any stars DON'T have planets, or are they just an expected feature of stellar formation?
On July 14, 2015, New Horizons flew by Pluto. Scientists have used the data from the mission so far to uncover active geology, an enormous canyon, a unique case of chemical coloration, and more. What else might we discover as we venture deeper into the Kuiper Belt?
We've talked about some of the ways microgravity can negatively affect humans, but for bacteria, being in space might be quite beneficial!
On August 21, 2017, the United States will experience its first total solar eclipse since 1979! If you're in the right place at the right time, you're in for a spectacular show!
FRBs last just a few milliseconds, and astronomers have detected less than a couple dozen of them without our current telescopes. Where do scientists think they come from?
Where did astronomers finally conclude that the 'Weird! Signal' was coming from? What has Elon Musk been up to with SpaceX and the Falcon Heavy rocket?
A lot of our knowledge of the inner solar system was gained fairly recently, and the Mariner program led the way!
How often do we miss asteroids like 2017 OO1, and what are astronomers doing to limit their impact? Meanwhile, distant icy worlds might not look as promising in our search for extraterrestrial life as scientists once thought.
We’ve learned a lot about Mars over the years, but we keep uncovering new mysteries — important, fundamental aspects of The Red Planet that we just can’t explain. Here are three of them.
The Planetary Protection Office is hiring and we’ve found a much easier way to study neutrinos.
Even with scientifically controlled diets, astronauts can't yet safely prevent gas in space. What gives them gas, and why are they still eating it?
A new detector can use neutrinos to help us take a peek inside Earth, and a study of jellyfish galaxies can help us understand more about an unsolved problem in astronomy.
Mir taught us a lot, but most days, it was also a mess of mold and electrical problems... even when it wasn’t literally on fire.
New research looks into how snow falls on Mars, and scientists have been looking into other things falling from the sky onto planets: diamonds!
How will we communicate with the ships that we send to other stars? Scientists think the answer might involve using the sun as a giant lens to strengthen the signal.
Scientists have worked out how likely it is that distant planets can see earth, and we are learning new ways to study the magnetic fields of galaxies.
The Sun's corona is hotter than its surface, but where do scientists think such immense heat comes from?
Cassini is about to take its final dive into the rings of Saturn, and scientists are still debating the status of water on our moon.
It might feel like it was only yesterday that the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars, but in August, the rover celebrated its fifth birthday! For a kindergartener, it’s made some really impressive discoveries.
Peggy Whitson is back from the International Space Station after breaking a list of records, and a major solar storm delivered the biggest solar flare we've seen in over a decade.
In the 1960s, the USA almost put a ring around the Earth by launching hundreds of millions of tiny copper needles into space in an attempt to create a reliable boost for their communications systems.
Last week, the Cassini probe dove into Saturn, never to be heard from again, but thankfully, Cassini wasn’t the only probe out there. And we’ve also found an exoplanet that might be even darker and stranger than we thought.
The geographic north pole doesn't always line up with the magnetic north pole, but what do scientists know about this flipping field?
Astronomers discovered something cool about an object in the asteroid belt (2006 VW139/288P), and the European Space Agency is conducting a bed rest study that could help us get on our way to Mars.
In the early days of the Cold War, it was difficult to send and receive messages across the globe. Before the US launched its first satellite in January 1958, the military tried a creative solution: bouncing radio waves off the Moon.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced some ambitious plans at the International Aeronautical Congress. If he's right, we could have humans living on the moon and Mars within a decade, and you might never have an 18 hour flight again!
Hollywood can be pretty negligent about physics and astronomy, even in really good movies, but there are a few specific misconceptions that pop up again and again. Movies mentioned (and potentially spoiled) in this video: Armageddon, Star Trek (2009), Total Recall (1990), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Astronomers might have finally discovered part of why Tabby's Star acts so strangely and we have some new ideas about what triggers a type Ia supernova.
Solar sail technology was once only theoretical, but it's now being developed to propel spaceships. How did the first solar sails get into space, and why?
The results are in from the neutron star collision this past August! Astronomers are revealing what they’ve learned so far, with more pure gold research underway!
Nothing’s final yet, but there might be a drone, called the Mars Helicopter, on the upcoming Mars 2020 rover.
Last week, engineers announced two possible lunar habitats: a big pillowy space closet and lunar lava tubes.
If wormholes aren't just convenient plot devices for science fiction writers, they’re still much weirder than anything we could make up.
Earth has received its first speedy visitor from another star system, A/2017 U1, and the Dawn Mission has helped astronomers gather more evidence about possible former oceans on Ceres.
Solar storms are really common, but occasionally they can be huge, causing more than pretty light shows in the auroras. What would happen nowadays if we had a massive solar storm?
Astronomers found a galaxy older than almost any we’ve ever seen before, and we have a new, faster method to use in our search for habitable planets.
The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, is on its way to becoming a leader in space exploration - and they’re just getting started.
What exactly is a ‘Zombie Star,’ and how does it compare to other stars and supernovas? We’ve also learned more about how the haze over Pluto plays a role in its temperature.
In some science fiction movies, satellites control the weather in disastrous, but effective ways. Here in reality, we have attempted to influence the weather, with mixed results.
Two years ago we were very excited about the announcement of water on Mars, but some new research challenges that idea. And one of our most successful exoplanet finding tools has discovered another one, this time pretty close to home!
Chemical engines can only move us through the solar system so quickly, but a faster method is being engineered right now that could get us to Mars in just 40 days!
Our asteroid news edition this week clears up some misleading headlines regarding 3200 Phaethon, and our interstellar visitor has both a new name and a shape we haven’t seen before.
As computers have gotten more powerful, they’ve completely transformed how we explore the solar system. And along the way, the space industry has given computer science a boost too.
We have discovered an enormous black hole that’s older and farther away than any we’ve ever seen, and a recent rocket launch did not go as planned.
The solar system is enormous, and includes the Kuiper Belt and the Scattered Disc, both of which turn out to be really weird in some pretty awesome ways.
Astronomers have found a couple galaxies that were much larger than expected, and the Opportunity rover might be in for some harsh Martian weather!
Creating a Mars colony is a dream for many people, but it comes with some unique and challenging problems.
Artificial Intelligence has helped astronomers discover 2 new planets in systems that we'd already looked at, and new theories about how Mars lost some of its water have surfaced.
The United Arab Emirates is planning an enormous colony on Mars, but first they are building the biggest Mars simulator right here on earth.
Here's a sneak peek at three missions coming up in 2018. We have rockets launching, spacecraft arriving at their destinations, and missions coming to an end.
60 years ago, in January 1958, the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer 1.
We might be closer to figuring out how our solar system was born and NASA has two finalists for its next New Frontiers mission.
Long months or years spent in space can be isolating, making astronauts susceptible to boredom and depression. Here's a look at some long-term studies we've done here on Earth to figure out what isolation does to people, and how to make it a little more tolerable.
Our favorite fast radio burst, FRB 121102, brings us one step closer to understanding its source, and astronomers have a new theoretical upper limit for star masses.
A naked singularity is something that should be a black hole, but it’s neither black nor a hole. If they exist, they’ll rewrite physics as we know it.
According to two new papers, Mars may have gigantic drinkable glaciers and we might have found the reason that galaxies glow.
Earthlings have been searching for alien life for centuries, and more than a few times we were confident that we'd found evidence, but to err is human after all.
Scientists have thought for awhile that pulsars could be used as a sort of galactic positioning system, and astronomers have published the most advanced topographical map of Titan to date!
We've been trying to count the galaxies in the universe since the mid '90s, but our estimates change as our tools improve. So what does our current estimate really mean?
Earth has some new orbiters, and while one of them is vexing many scientists, another will help us learn more about our atmosphere.
Big, fiery rocket launches are just too powerful for something like a toaster-sized CubeSat once it’s in space. Electrospray propulsion is a promising new way to move these little satellites.
We've found the first evidence of planets outside of the Milky Way, and SpaceX has finally launched the Falcon Heavy rocket into space!
One way to help us live on Mars would be to terraform the planet. Some scientists think we might be able to do that by giving it a new magnetic field!
It might look like a perfect circle, but the Moon is actually wider than it is tall. Now, new calculations indicate that the Moon’s shape is a remnant of a time when Earth might’ve been covered in a single, global ice sheet.
What kinds of tools do astronomers use to calculate the age of the universe, and how can they determine the speed of its expansion?
Astronomers have finally observed what causes pulsating auroras, and our estimates of the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy have shrunk.
The first stars turned all the neutral hydrogen in the universe back into ions, created a bunch of new elements, and just generally made a mess. But without them, you wouldn’t be here.
Enceladus’ environment could totally be habitable for at least one real-world microbe and we just found the oldest supernova.
Rovers like Curiosity search for life on Mars using rock and soil samples, but why don't they examine liquid or frozen water?
The Juno spacecraft has been making close flybys of Jupiter and its measurements have revealed some new things about Jupiter’s interior. And astronomers were surprised after putting together the most complete atmospheric profile that’s currently possible for a “hot Saturn” 700 light years away!
It's not the happiest subject, but when someone dies in space, or on another planet, what will happen to the body?
We've found the first confirmed superconductors in meteorites, and our simulated atmosphere game is really heating up!
Pulsed plasma thrusters use the same stuff that’s on your frying pan to make spacecraft zoom around the universe. And they’ve been doing it since the 1960s.
Last week we lost legendary scientist Stephen Hawking. To honor of one of the greatest legacies in cosmology, we wanted to celebrate and unpack some of his most famous findings.
Before we had rockets like the Falcon 9, we had other ideas of how we might shoot for the moon: space guns!
Scientists have found a galaxy with almost no dark matter and we have finally solved the Leading Arm mystery!
Neutron stars are some of the strangest things in the universe, but are they the source of the mysterious Fast Radio Bursts? Or is it aliens? Spoilers: probably not aliens.
We’ve seen a distant star from another galaxy far, far away, and the Milky Way is growing, thanks to baby stars born in the outer edge of our galaxy’s disk.
Specialized rovers provide all kinds of creative solutions to the problem of navigating new terrain, and future missions might just carry some weird bots like these.
Solar tornadoes are not tornadoes, and scientists are studying a black hole with a telescope bigger than the earth!
To expand their range on visits to the moon, astronauts needed a way to travel faster, go farther, and carry more than walking provided. Thankfully, they had the Lunar Roving Vehicle.
From launching a new satellite, to finding diamonds from a lost world, researchers have been hard at work transforming how we think about our planet, the solar system, and the rest of the universe.
Where does our solar system end, and interstellar space begin, and what is it like there? Satellites and probes like IBEX and Voyager 1 & 2 help us get a better look at our special corner of the galaxy.
New research is changing our ideas about the history of Mars's moons and we might have found the most active region of space.
Fermi bubbles are made up of gamma rays, but where they came from is still up for debate. Did they come from a star-forming region, or the black hole at the middle of our galaxy?
The InSight lander is finally launching and headed to Mars, and Hubble has revealed some hot supernova info.
The universe could be a donut in a fourth spatial dimension. Which would mean that we could potentially see our own galaxy repeated from the past... Our 3D brains aren't ready for this.
We have been studying our home galaxy for years, but even though astronomy has come a long way, there is still a lot we don't know about the Milky Way.
Researchers found surprising new evidence hiding in data captured back in 1997, and we've discovered stars forming in a distant galaxy as early as 250 million years after the Big Bang.
Why Does the Moon Look Bigger on the Horizon? The full moon might seem bigger on the horizon than when it's higher up, but when does it actually take up more space in the sky?
We may have found another interstellar asteroid and scientists have some new ideas about how Saturn's moons got their weird shapes.
The first time scientists found exoplanets, they were orbiting something very different from our sun: a pulsar.
Astronomers are trying to answer the question of how Pluto formed, and we have more evidence for the existence of Planet Nine!
Many ideas have come and gone, but Project Daedalus was a uniquely ambitious plan from the 1970s that never quite came to be.
According to a new model, days on Earth used to really fly by, and today Pluto has wind-swept dunes made of very weird sand.
Can geometry predict the future? Cosmologists think the overall curvature of universe can tell us secrets about how it will eventually end.
Last week, NASA released some pretty cool Mars news: Curiosity found even more evidence to indicate the planet could’ve been habitable billions of years ago.
We can’t find evidence of the Sun’s family, or how it might have formed, but we do have some pretty good theories.
The global dust storm on Mars is threatening the Opportunity rover and the wind on Venus might be changing the length of its days.
When people live throughout the solar system, we'll need some way to feed them that doesn't involve constant shipments of Earth-grown food. Will the asteroid belt be our new cosmic food court?
Astronomers have finally found evidence to help solve the missing baryon problem, and they're pointing telescopes toward the Intergalactic Medium to figure it out.
These three stars can easily be seen with the naked eye, but it took some fancy telescopes for us to realize how weird they really are!
SPHERE took a photo of a baby planet and the origin of the asteroid belt may be less mysterious than we thought.
The sun is obviously a big factor in the earth's weather, but changes in the solar cycle don't always affect our climate in straightforward ways.
Our Milky Way Galaxy once dined on the Sausage Galaxy, and Jupiter's auroras seem to be heavily influenced by one of its moons. It's a galaxy-eat-galaxy kind of universe out there!
We're always learning more about far away galaxies and exoplanets, but we still have some pretty big mysteries hanging out here in the solar system, like why Venus spins the way it does.
Last week scientists announced that they’ve likely identified the very first astrophysical source of high-energy neutrinos.
Researchers have discovered an underground, liquid water lake on Mars! What might it be like, and why did it take us so long to find it?
The Cosmic Microwave Background shows us the oldest light in the universe, but to really understand the early universe we need something even older: The Cosmic Neutrino Background.
Przybylski’s Star has been puzzling astronomers for decades, and it might contain elements or isotopes that scientists have never seen before!
It's possible that the moon might have been able to support life billions of years ago, and scientists are using meteorites to learn about the history of our sun.
Neptune's radius is almost four times larger than Earth's, its surface has super intense storms, and we barely know anything else about it. It is time to send another orbiter out there.
An inside out planetary nebula has given astronomers insight into what might happen in our own solar system someday, and it's that time of year again to search for shooting stars.
The Deep Space Network is a special network of radio dishes for tracking and talking to spacecraft, and it contributes some cool scientific observations of its own too.
On Aug. 12, 2018 the Parker Solar Probe started its journey to the sun and New Horizons is looking at a mysterious glow at the edge of the solar system.
Finding a red nugget galaxy is like discovering a time capsule from the early universe.
Some of the oldest galaxies we’ve ever seen are small, faint satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, and they're providing us with a glimpse of how the universe evolved.
The Ulysses mission revolutionized our understanding of the sun, but it's been the only orbiter to take this kind of out-of-ecliptic journey. Will an upcoming mission give us even more?
A glowing, purple ribbon of light named STEVE is weirder than we thought and we now have evidence that there is water ice on the moon!
The Hypatia stone is one of the weirdest rocks on the planet. It's not just out of this world, it might be out of this solar system!
We’ve got some new evidence for water beneath Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and a new model of Jupiter’s weird magnetic field.
We've only found one planet in a globular cluster, where gravitational interactions should usually rip baby planets apart, but that's not all that excites astronomers about PSR 1620-26 b.
Computer models are helping scientists on the hunt for small black holes and new data is giving us a better understanding of the universe’s largest explosions.
Part of being very far away from the rest of the universe is that the signals are very faint, so sometimes you need a nice, quiet spot to listen from.
Scientists may have discovered up to 31 more cryovolcano remnants on Ceres, and the Iridium flares are slowly being allowed to burn up in our atmosphere, so see them while you still can!
Scientists can’t directly observe dark matter, and they still don’t know what it is… so why are they so confident it exists?
There is some super weird, noodley stuff inside neutron stars and scientists have found evidence that black holes can have strange geometries.
Diffuse interstellar bands were first discovered in 1919 and since then scientists have found nearly 500 of them. How many do we understand? Only one.
Astronomers have found more evidence for Planet 9, but another study has added another problem to our list of space travel problems.
The most common type of exoplanets might be worlds like our ice giant, Uranus. Understanding it could be key to the history of planets all over the galaxy.
We’ve discovered what appears to be the first known moon outside of the solar system and new models of Europa’s surface predict the presence of ice blades!
Normal interplanetary travel uses lots of fuel, but taking advantage of some quirks of gravity can let us travel between planets using hardly any fuel at all.
It's been a tough week for space missions, from a failed Soyuz launch to two emergency shutdowns of space-based telescopes.
Gamma-ray bursts are one of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy, but the mystery began on accident, thanks to the Cold War!
The water on Mars probably doesn't have much oxygen, but new models show that life doesn't need as much O2 as we thought. And NASA is sending a claw machine to the red planet!
There are exoplanets out there that seem very Earth-like, but if you look out and see liquid metal instead of liquid water, you might be in the Venus zone.
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon got closer than it will be until 2093, and the reflecting light has astronomers puzzled, and the relationship between black holes and magnetic fields is now a little more clear.
Exorings are pretty elusive, but we’ve already found what might be the first set of exorings, and if we find more, we’ll have a treasure trove of new information.
October was bittersweet for space scientists as we said goodbye to both the Kepler Space Telescope and Dawn mission.
A trip into space produces physiological effects in human beings, but it can also change a person in a profound, psychological way.
Astronomers may have figured out some cool geology on Pluto, and Barnard's star is back in the running for having a planet!
With so many galaxies in the universe, some are bound to astound us. Here are three of the most extreme galaxies scientists have discovered so far.
We might be sitting next to the largest bomb in the galaxy and NASA's InSight lander will touch down on Mars this Monday!
Our planet shares a lot with other rocky planets in our solar system, but astronomers have found a few mountains out there that are nothing like ours.
InSight has safely landed on Mars, and astronomers have some improved theories about the TRAPPIST-1 system.
There’s a big difference between the number of satellites that simulations predict, and the number we’ve actually seen with telescopes, but why?
OSIRIS-REx finally entered orbit around the asteroid Bennu this week and new research has found an old recipe for RNA.
There are renewable energy sources here on Earth, but to meet our clean energy needs we should consider every possible option, including the Moon.
A paper published last week proposed a hypothesis that identified 95% of the missing stuff in the universe, but the headlines have been a little over-hyped.
We’ve sent more spacecraft to Mars than any other planet, but around half of the probes that have ever attempted to explore Mars have either crashed or disappeared.
New Horizons is on its way to Ultima Thule, the most distant object a spacecraft has ever visited. And scientists have created the sugar component of DNA under extraterrestrial conditions.
Scientists are constantly researching different ways people could potentially live on Mars. Start making your future Martian travel plans with this collection of videos about the unique challenges of putting humans on Mars.
Massive stars die in fantastic explosions called supernovas. Most of them fit neatly into a few categories, but then there are the peculiars, a special group of supernovas that don’t quite fit in with the rest.
2019 will be a big year for the moon! Not only is it the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, but our closest neighbor is receiving a bunch of new visitors this year.
Earth probably isn’t the best place in the universe. It turns out there might be even better places to live that are even more suitable for life: superhabitable planets.
The new year is off to a great start for space exploration! New Horizons has passed the farthest object ever visited by a spacecraft, and China put a lander on the dark side of the Moon!
On a cosmic scale, Mercury isn’t very far away, but it's incredibly hard to get there. Getting into orbit around it takes years of flybys in the solar system, but we're going to do it again!
A super bright flash in the sky might be the birth of a supernova remnant and it turns out there's more than one way to build a binary star system.
Since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, for millennia we could only guess what mysteries lay on its "dark side." Then in 1959 the Luna 3 spacecraft sent back a photo that prompted more questions than it answered.
Astronomers are learning just how big early stars might have been, and how their deaths have shaped the universe. Some may have even been so massive that they skipped the whole star phase and collapsed straight into black holes!
Not all of the naturally occurring elements were discovered here on Earth. Helium was discovered by examining sunlight, and that same technique is now teaching us about the composition of distant galaxies.
The event that gave us our moon may have also given us the elements necessary for life and scientists might have found a very tiny piece of our solar system's past way out in space.
For decades the space shuttle was integral to space exploration. In orbit it helped build the ISS, but on the ground it needed help from other gigantic machines.
There are a few ideas about how the universe will end, but a paper published last week suggests that dark energy might eventually rip everything apart!
The Universe is expanding which means distant galaxies are only moving farther away from us. So in the farthest future, will our night sky be empty?
MU69 seems to be much flatter than we thought and the Gaia space telescope can tell us where galaxies have been and, maybe, where they're going.
Saturn’s rings might only be around a hundred million years old, billions of years younger than some astronomers have suspected, and they might not be the only rings the planet has ever had.
For more than a decade, Opportunity has been one of our best tools for understanding Mars, but after eight months of listening and hoping, it was officially time to put the rover to bed.
Tidally locked planets could be more common than Earth-like planets! And these "eyeball planets" might even be a promising place to look for unique lifeforms!
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft fired a bullet into an asteroid and Neptune officially has 14 moons!
On earth a sound echo lets you hear something again. Over great distances, a light echo can let you see something again, specifically an exploding star.
Researchers think a planet-wide groundwater system may have once existed on Mars, and SpaceX launched the very first commercial crew capsule which docked on the International Space Station!
From gigantic planets too close to their stars, to those in unfathomably wide orbits, astronomers have discovered seemingly impossible solar systems that shouldn’t exist at all. But they do.
The Beresheet lander is on its way to the moon and Jupiter's magnetic field might be affecting Europa's ocean.
There’s probably life somewhere besides Earth, but all the exoplanets are so far away we may never see their surfaces in detail or intercept a clear radio signal from them. How do we determine if a distant planet has life?
There’s nothing boring about Bennu! From its chemistry, size, shape, and spin to its extremely old age, it proves that even the smallest objects in the solar system have a bizarre and fascinating history.
No planet’s trip around a star is exactly like the one before it, because solar systems aren't as static as they first appear. Even small nudges can add up to disaster, but some objects find safe orbits with the help of a partner or two.
Astronomers have found a new celestial object, and it's moving really, really fast!
Research suggests that nearly every star has at least one planet, but we haven't found any other solar systems that look quite like ours.
The hunt for dark matter is still on, and the candidates for it could be primordial black holes as massive as Earth, or axions, as tiny as the smallest subatomic particles in existence!
The oldest light we can see comes from when the universe was less than 400,000 years old, so how can we study those first few moments of history?
Scientists have discovered a shard of a planet that survived the death of its star and TESS has found the first direct evidence of an exocomet.
The way modern researchers study the sky hasn’t really changed in the last few centuries. For the most part, astronomers still study things by analyzing their light.
For the first time ever we have visual confirmation that black holes actually exist and we got it with a telescope the size of our planet.
Scientists have been searching for alien life by honing in on the existence of liquid water, but we might be overlooking some types of life out there that doesn't need water at all.
Around a quarter of a million years after the Big Bang, the very first molecule, helium hydride was formed. Now scientists have confirmed that molecule is still being made, and they found it with some help from a high flying airplane.
When astronomers study the universe, they’re often using telescopes that cost millions or even billions of dollars to build. Luckily for the rest of us, there are still plenty of incredible things to see in the sky with the more affordable models.
Astronomers have gotten pretty good at calculating how fast the universe is expanding, but new measurements don’t line up with the predictions of well-tested laws of physics. Now scientists have a new question to ponder: Why are these numbers so different?
Some space missions get a lot of attention, but not all the biggest space exploration stories get the recognition they deserve. This is the story of a robotic craft that captured the first-ever glimpse of a comet’s icy core!
Last week, an asteroid impact drill was conducted, which demonstrated what might happen if an asteroid hit us within the decade. It didn't go quite as well as we would like.
In a few million years, we’re going to have to leave Earth if we want to survive. But how long can we actually outrun extinction before the universe becomes uninhabitable to us?
Blue Origin announced a a new lunar lander, Blue Moon, that will be delivering supplies, and eventually astronauts to the lunar surface within the next 5 years, and robots like Chang’e-4 are giving us an early glimpse at what we might find there!
Scientists have come up with some really creative ways to keep astronauts well fed in space for days and months at a time. But you should take some stories about space food with a grain of salt.
Pluto might seem like the least likely place to find liquid water, but thanks to New Horizons, we have new information about oceans on the dwarf planet and more from the outer reaches of the solar system!
When something breaks on a spaceship, there's not an auto-shop it can pull up to, so NASA scientists have to get creative.
Origami is helping to ease our journeys back from space, and astronomers are learning more about coronal mass ejections from a distant star!
Building and launching rockets to learn about other worlds hasn't been great for Earth, but environmental engineers are working on changing that legacy.
We’ve discovered a planet that, for its size, is in a very strange place around it’s star! And other scientists, inspired by comets, have come up with a new way to potentially make breathable oxygen for people exploring Mars in the future.
It’s easy to imagine that our galaxy is basically frozen in time from the perspective of a human lifespan, but in fact, the Milky Way is incredibly dynamic and will undergo some pretty amazing changes in only a few decades!
A little over a year ago, we covered a mind-blowing discovery on SciShow Space News. Some researchers even suggested that, if this was confirmed, it would be one of the biggest astronomy findings in years. Except, as it turns out… that discovery was probably wrong.
Obviously most telescopes need to see the sky to do their job, but when you are studying a wave that can pass right through the earth, the best place for your telescope might be underground.
NIAC has awarded their first two grant winners for phase III: optical mining and 3D modeling craters, and researchers are further honing in on how to identify faraway habitable planets.
Space technology gets applied in all sorts of ways down here on Earth, making us more comfortable, healthier, and even saving lives!
Our star continuously throws out streams of charged particles at more than 500 kilometers per second, something we call Solar Wind. And just like regular weather can be unpredictable and dangerous, space weather can be, too. Meanwhile, on the other side of the solar system, researchers have also been investigating a certain planet’s rings, and it's probably not the planet you're thinking of.
No one has ever conclusively seen a proton turn into other, lighter particles, but fifty million liters of water in Japan might change that and our ideas about subatomic particles forever.
NASA is sending a robot to Saturn’s giant moon Titan and instead of landing, orbiting, or driving when it gets there, this mission will fly.
The search began with a physicist checking for sources of static on phone calls in the 1930s, but it took several decades to finally make one of the biggest discoveries in astronomy, Sagittarius A*.
The 1960s were an optimistic time for space exploration - so much so that a team designed a rocket called the Sea Dragon that was big enough to launch an entire space station from the sea in one go!
Scientists have conclusively imaged a circumplanetary disk around a distant exoplanet, and Jupiter's auroras claim the spotlight with their unique Birkeland currents.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been teaching us about the moon for a decade now, and it's still going! What we’re learning from it will make space exploration and future moon missions much easier for future astronauts.
One day we might be able to live on Mars thanks to red wine, and domes made out of a very strange material, but don't pack your suitcase just yet.
Today, cosmic rays are used to understand things like supernovas, but in the early 1900s, they helped us discover brand-new subatomic particles long before the first accelerators.
TESS found 3 new exoplanets around a strangely calm m-dwarf star, and it's possible they could be habitable!
Every amazing mission you know about today started off as just an idea, and some of 2019’s early phase NIAC concepts could mean big things for our future.
Astronomers have found a Hot Jupiter - WASP-121b - that is leaking metal, and put together a new 3D map of the Milky Way showing that our galaxy is actually a bit twisted!
There’s a small asteroid that appears to orbit Earth in a horseshoe shape. Sometimes referred to as Earth’s second moon, but it's orbit is much weirder than that.
A new study provides mathematical evidence that dark matter could be much older than we thought and we've found a weird glitch in a neutron star.
There is a chemical reaction discovered a century ago that could be the key to creating everything from fuel to shelter on Mars!
Shortly after Jupiter formed, it might have been struck by an object that may have otherwise become its own planet! And researchers have a new estimate of how many Earth-like planets might exist.
To get humans on Mars we're going to need some innovative tech that can move lots of things at high speed. Luckily, we might already have something that can do the job.
Scientists have observed a collision of two of the universe's most extreme objects. And a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa makes an important step forward.
Everyone is watching the sky during a solar eclipse, but but if you look down, you'll catch another kind of light show.
We have some good news this week for all the James Webb fans out there, as well as a look a some creative chemistry that may help us find the first solid evidence of an exomoon!
Venus was once thought to have been very earth-like and pleasant, but now it's considered a harsh wasteland that we wouldn't even send a robot to.
This week, scientists try to figure out what went wrong with India's moon lander, and what went right with a newly discovered, naturally occurring mineral.
Meteorites are extraterrestrial rocks that have ended up on earth. All of them are literally 'out of this world,' but here are three of the strangest of these aliens.
Researchers found water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet about 110 light-years away, and there's another rock from interstellar space flying through our solar system!
Early telegraph operators and WWI spies picked up some weird noises on radio waves. As it turned out, they were actually listening to plasma waves in Earth’s magnetic field lines!
Around 500 Million years ago, Earth’s climate was warm, and the planet had nearly no ice, even at the poles. Then an asteroid broke apart deep in our solar system, and our planet plunged into an ice age at the same time. Are the two events related? Also, will future Mars residents farm bugs for food?
CubeSats have a lot of advantages, but they need a way to move and still stay small, and that means new miniaturized propulsion systems that can help us get these tiny spacecraft out into the universe.
Two scientists have proposed that Planet Nine could actually be a black hole, and a handful of telescopes observed a distant black hole absolutely destroying a star!
Black holes are some of the most extreme astronomical objects out there, but there are some that really standout. Let's look at black holes that grow larger, consume more, and spin faster than the rest.
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is quiet now, but new evidence suggests that it woke up around 3.5 million years ago. And Enceladus may have the the building blocks of the building blocks of life.
You’d think it would be easy to tell if an object in space was a star or a planet - is it big, hot, and shining? It’s a star! Small, cool, and made of rock and gas? Planet! But cosmic oddities know as brown dwarfs remind us that the universe is more complicated and interesting than that.
Gravitational lensing has given us a look at a galaxy in the very, very distant cosmic past using x-ray light, and NASA finally got its ICON mission off the ground!
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most complex telescope we’ve ever sent into space. But, Webb is not, in fact, in space… yet.
Scientists are learning new things by looking at the remains of exoplanets, NASA has unveiled a new spacesuit design, and engineers fixed a problem from one hundred million kilometers away.
The ESA Hipparcos team worked for 20 years on the project, then had to watch as the mission ALMOST failed! But somehow, they turned it around, and today, this little-known mission has totally transformed what we know about space.
After observing what we thought was just a big asteroid in the asteroid belt, a team of astronomers now thinks this might qualify as a dwarf planet. And scientists had the chance to directly observe the collision of two neutron stars for the first time.
There are so many things we can do with poo! Waste is the enemy in matters of space exploration, but there are plenty of ways to use that waste to help make a mission successful.
Voyager 2 is the second object to leave our solar system, which means we now have twice as much information about its edges! And scientists have found a record-breaking black hole.
Other worlds don't seem very welcoming to us Earthlings, and it can be hard to practice our off-world explorations from millions of kilometers away. But Earth also has its fair share of hostile places that we can use to prepare for those unfriendly environments.
Spacebit is sending crawling, jumping, mini-robots to the moon, and researchers have witnessed a pulsar emit a very cool combination of traits in its most recent flare.
Submillimeter galaxies are ancient, dense, massive galaxies with up to 10 times the number of stars in the Milky Way, and for a long time, scientists couldn’t even figure out how they existed in the first place.
Oxygen levels in the Martian atmosphere are mysteriously inconsistent, and scientists don’t have a clear explanation for what’s behind the changes. Meanwhile, scientists DO have explanations for the tiger-like stripes on one of Saturn’s moons.
M31N 2008-12a is a rare phenomenon called a recurrent nova, and it may hold the key to understanding the lives and cataclysmic deaths of massive stars.
The star-mapping satellite Gaia has found more than 20 stars speeding across the Milky Way toward intergalactic space. There are just a few things that can slingshot a star out of a galaxy and all of them take some extreme gravitational interactions.
Scientists have discovered a black hole that could possibly everything we know about black holes, and also, evidence that planets, yes planets, could form around super massive black holes.
More than half of all the matter in the universe is out in the dark, "empty space." Although it's basically invisible, the intergalactic medium has a lot to tell us about the stuff we can see.
Scientists have revealed the results of the Parker Solar Probe’s first two flybys of the Sun, and LIGO has a new instrument called the quantum vacuum squeezer!
Pulsars are more than just cool blinking lights shining across the universe. The discovery of the first binary pulsar paved the way for gravitational wave astronomy astronomy today.
This year, scientists have had a chance to study something pretty mind-boggling: a comet that came from outside of our solar system.
This has been another really good year for exploring the universe. This is our annual superlatives episode, so let’s take a look at the some of the coolest breakthroughs of 2019.
For more than 40 years, the Voyager probes have traveled through space sending back all kinds of fascinating data. But these probes were never meant to send us data forever - so how much longer will these amazing probes last?
2020 is going to be an exciting year for space exploration, if everything goes according to plan. Humans are heading to space in new spacecraft, multiple Mars missions are on the horizon, and scientists are getting a new perspective on our Sun!
Most of the meteorites that land on this planet are pretty tiny. And enough of them fall to Earth each day that, theoretically, you could find micrometeorite yourself.
There was a medical incident on the ISS which required NASA to treat an astronaut from Earth. And astronomers have discovered what might be some of the universe’s earliest stars.
To live on the Moon, we’ll need to do things we’ve never done before and overcome challenges we’ve never faced. Luckily for us, NASA is developing some brand-new technology at Swamp Works.
Astronomers are predicting that two stars are likely to merge and explode, and it may happen soon... on a cosmic timescale. Plus, scientists break up a meteorite and find the oldest solid matter ever discovered on earth.
Our moon has no atmosphere, but sometimes it has visible bands of light streaking across its sky, and scientists suspect that electrostatic forces could explain this levitating dust!
Astronomers have found the first asteroid orbiting closer to the Sun than Venus, and recently, some scientists have been looking at Earth, trying to understand the origins of our protective magnetic field.
There are billions of planets out there that don't orbit stars. The sheer abundance of these planets has led some scientists to wonder if life could emerge without a star.
On January 30, 2020, we had to say goodbye to NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope after more thank 16 years of revolutionizing infrared astronomy. Today, SciShow sends it off and says thank you by taking a look back at it’s incredible legacy.
In the 1700s, sailors used sextants to navigate the seas. Centuries later, these old-timey tools saved the day on not one, but two of the Apollo missions!
A new telescope, the DKIST, has given us our most direct look at the Sun ever, in the highest resolution yet. And a paper published last week has revealed how “the dunes” auroras may be more than just a new spectacle in the night sky.
There's a region of Earth's atmosphere known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, and it’s one of the most dangerous near-Earth areas of space, both for satellites and humans.
Pluto's heart is revealing itself to be a major influence on the dwarf planet’s landscape and atmosphere, and scientists used atom probe tomography (APT) for the first time on lunar soil to study it atom by atom!
We’ve visited lots of places in our solar system in the last 60 years, but modern technology has made an unlikely candidate the hottest new frontier of solar system exploration: asteroids. Today, we’ll take a look at a few exciting discoveries that marked some asteroid firsts.
The constellation of Orion has one shoulder marked by a bright red star called Betelgeuse, but over the last year it's dimmed enough to notice with the naked eye! and mission scientists are shedding some light on how Arrokoth and other Kuiper Belt objects may have formed.
We’ve detected seismic activity all around the solar system, from earthquakes to moonquakes, marsquakes to venusquakes. But the most dramatic quakes we know of actually happen on stars!
We finally have some results from the InSight lander’s measurements on Mars, and the Japanese Space Agency is moving forward with a probe that will explore Mars’s moons.
Scientists just discovered the largest explosion ever detected, and it's thanks to the collaborative efforts of scientists from all over the world.
Light travels through space as fast as anything in the universe possibly can, but before scientists could figure out light’s speed, they had to figure out whether that speed was even finite.
Imagine being excited to use one of the world's most advanced telescopes, only to see bright streaks of light on every picture! This is a problem facing some astronomers as satellites fill up the night sky.
The largest planet in our solar system is no stranger to throwing its weight around, both to our benefit and detriment here on Earth.
We might be able to use slime molds to help predict the shape of matter in the universe, and the Rosetta mission may have figured out why many comets seem to be missing a bunch of nitrogen.
While astronomers are busy searching for life beyond Earth, they’ve also started asking another question: If life seems so difficult to find, then why is our world so full of it? One answer might be overhead right now: the Moon!
Over the last few years astronomers have been doing more and more research based on string theory, and thanks to modern telescopes the results are... less than encouraging.
Earlier this year, scientists pitched a mission to bring "the cloud" to Mars. While this proposal may seem expensive and risky, it's a legitimate idea that could fundamentally change how we plan space missions!
Scientists announced a major discovery about Uranus using 34-year-old data from Voyager 2, and the Canadian telescope CHIME has detected 9 new FRB repeaters, helping us learn more about these mysterious signals.
According to the cosmological principle, the universe is more or less the same in all directions. But what happens when we put this to the test?
It's tricky to study the particles of our Sun because Earth’s magnetic field deflects them, but scientists have found ways to do it! They're helping us understand things like the Sun’s origin, what it's made of, and how it might affect future colonization of the Solar System.
Researchers are already trying to figure out if people can make space babies. If we need to live in space long-term, will our species be able to reproduce?
It’s been a great week for space explosions! Astronomers learned more about the mechanism that causes novas by looking at the nova V906 Carinae, and the brightest supernova ever recorded shed some new light on pulsation pair-instability.
Since it launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped more than a million images and changed the way we see the universe, literally.
The New Horizons spacecraft has given us lots of clues about the early days of our solar system, but we don't always have to travel billions of kilometers to peer into our past.
You’ve probably heard a lot about how climate change is affecting our planet, but did you know a warming climate also affects objects in space?
We’ve developed thousands of technologies for space exploration, but luckily for us, sometimes those solutions apply to problems here on the ground, too.
Scientists first saw patches of ice on Mercury 20 years ago, and that discovery raised a lot of questions: How could ice survive on one of the solar system’s hottest planets, and how did it get there in the first place?
Life on Earth depends on the steady nature of our star, and an international team of scientists searched thousands of other stars to try to find out if the sun has always been as consistent as it is now. And According to a study published Monday in Nature Astronomy, scientists searching for habitable exoplanets should maybe be looking in some more exotic places.
Scientists have found at least three cycles in nature that can be traced back to the alignment of the planets. And while they won’t tell you anything about your love life or personality, by studying them, we can learn about our planet’s past and future—and even how the solar system has changed.
The idea that the Moon is a blown-off chunk of the Earth is known as the giant impact hypothesis - but the presence of carbon on the Moon throws this hypothesis into question.
In general, a star’s size will determine its final destiny. Some stars fizzle out, while others explode, and what seals their fate may come down to a curious, cannibalistic process happening inside their cores!
Some satellites orbit in the same direction the planet rotates, which means they get a boost for their launch, but most have orbits where that isn’t ideal, and that creates some challenges for engineers.
Lasers are incredible narrow beams of light we can use to do everything from cutting metal to operating on people's eyeballs. But even though we came up with the idea on our own, humans didn’t actually make the first lasers.
Scientists picked up two unusual signals that seemed to be coming up from the ground instead of down from space. They're still working on understanding why, but despite what you may have heard, they aren't evidence for a parallel universe where time runs backwards.
Some scientists believe that 3.6 billion years ago Earth might have been purple, and that theory is giving us some clues in our search for life in the universe.
A dwarf galaxy crashing through the Milky Way billions of years ago could have set off periods of star formation, and astronomers recently captured a rare flashing phenomenon that only shows up in the sky for a few days!
Our Milky Way galaxy is alive and well, producing new stars all the time. But there’s another group of galaxies out there, populated only by venerable red dwarf stars - the young stars are nowhere to be seen. In effect, these galaxies are... dead. How did they die?
Astronomers looking farther back in time than ever before are giving us a better idea of what the early universe must have been like, and we've identified another of the mysterious ultraluminous X-ray pulsars.
Mars Express, one of the longest-running planetary probes ever made, was only intended to last for about two Earth years, but it's still going at 17! And it's taught us an unbelievable amount, including everything from studying its geology and atmosphere to searching for signs of life!
Some tidally-locked exoplanets might actually be more habitable than astronomers initially thought, and we have some ideas about how Peter Pan disks can last so much longer than other protoplanetary disks.
Earlier this spring NASA announced a new research model that predicts that ocean worlds are far from rare, and our galaxy might be full of them. And a new study examines evidence that Pluto may have had an underground ocean all along!
Scientists may have found the light from two merging black holes, and a gas giant, without the gas.
Life on Earth has always been shaped by other bodies in space, and life in our oceans is especially susceptible to interactions that have huge effects on life as we know it!
Astronomers have some insights into the mysterious disappearance of the luminous blue variable star in the Kinman Dwarf Galaxy, and we're digging up more clues about how our friend the Moon may have formed.
In the first mission of its kind, Deep Impact’s goal was to teach us about the interior of comets...by blowing a hole in the side of one!
Earlier this month, a Chinese moon rover discovered a mysterious glittery substance at the bottom of a lunar crater. How did it get there? Also, Comet NEOWISE takes thousands of years to circle the Sun, and right now we can see it in our night sky!
What exactly are the invisible things out there, and how did they help form the universe as we know it? To explore and understand the most spectacular structures out there, scientists have been using cosmic shear to indirectly detect dark matter, and map out and how it’s distributed around the universe.
New research suggests that Venus’ patterned crust might currently be more active than we thought! Astrophysicists have also modeled the orbits of mysterious objects between Jupiter and Neptune, and found that they could have come from other solar systems!
There is an invisible shell of radiation surrounding our planet that can wipe out satellites and could endanger future explorers. One possible solution to this problem? Good, old-fashioned radio waves.
A launch window that only happens every 26 months means it’s the perfect time to head to Mars! The United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States all took advantage of this excellent timing.
Way out in the solar system, the heat of the Sun drops off dramatically, so the gas giants get just a tiny percent of the solar radiation that reaches Earth. Instead, their weather is fueled from the inside out!
We knew some stars created large amounts of calcium, but no one really ever knew how...until now! Plus, astrophysicists believe they’ve finally seen evidence of the star that created one of the most important supernovas ever!
Earth’s magnetic field is special! And, in the last 20 years, we’ve made incredible discoveries, thanks to a squad of probes that have flown around our planet, observing solar wind as a team!
Astronomers took advantage of a lunar eclipse to study Earth as if it were an exoplanet, and Mars's Insight lander used seismic data to reveal for the first time boundaries between different layers of Mars.
How can we be so sure of the way celestial bodies behave when they're so far away? With the help of some speakers, garbage cans, and springs of course.
Our neighboring star Betelgeuse got noticeably dimmer a few months ago, and thanks to the Hubble telescope, we recently figured out what was going on. Also, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suffered some damage this week.
The Red Planet was once more like Earth, with a thicker atmosphere and liquid water. Now, scientists are looking for clues to its past in the planet’s ancient fossil dunes, barchan dunes, and ghost dunes.
A new model has been able to predict solar flares with up to about 20 hours of warning, and our galaxy is farting blobs of cold gas inside the Fermi Bubbles!
Most rocky planets have pretty consistent surface features, with a fairly even mix of mountains and basins in each hemisphere. This is NOT the case on Mars! What do scientists know about this mystery?
Astronomers have thought for years that Earth was dry in the beginning, but a new paper suggests that Earth might have actually started out wet! And In other meteorite news, a new study of impact sites might give us new clues about what’s happening deep inside the earth!
Considering how massive our universe is, we know the distances to cosmic objects surprisingly well. What tools and clues do scientists use to measure distances that are so enormous they sound like made-up numbers?
Astronomers have been trying to figure out black holes for hundreds of years, and newly published research may hold some big clues! Plus, rust isn’t supposed to happen in dry and airless places like the Moon. Could the elements that allow for rust have come from Earth?
Some of the most exciting phenomena in space can’t be seen from Earth because our atmosphere soaks up high-energy light. That’s why NASA built Chandra, the most powerful X-ray telescope ever launched, and the observatory has helped scientists make major discoveries about high-energy events in space, including the processes surrounding the birth and death of stars!
Scientists can see how dark matter is distributed based on how its gravity affects light, but when astronomers compared recent data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope to current models, something didn’t add up. Does this mean our current assumptions about dark matter physics are wrong?
All the complexity in the universe ultimately owes its existence to one of the simplest materials possible: molecular hydrogen. And not only did this molecule play a huge role in building the universe as we know it, today, it also helps us explore it.
Is there life on Venus? If there is, it would have to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen! New evidence means the possibility of life there is in question, but it could also mean a few other things.
Most of the time, it’s not great when an expensive spacecraft slams into an extraterrestrial body. But now and then mission control intentionally crashes a spacecraft for science!
Scientists have taken a look at the underground lake found on Mars in 2018, and it might not be the only one! Plus, new clues might help us understand why the Sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than the surface!
From launching probes to ferrying experiment racks to the ISS, the Space Shuttle Atlantis has left quite the legacy on space exploration and scientific research.
Scientists may have discovered some clues to two vastly different anomalies. Microscopic diamonds inside of meteors, and why ancient black holes are so massive.
Given that Earth’s magnetic field helps protect its life-sustaining atmosphere, you might think that the stronger a planet’s magnetic field, the better. But as it turns out, some planets’ relationships with their magnetic fields are a little more complicated.
Did you know Einstein never thought we’d find actual black holes in space? It took decades of research to show black holes are physically possible, and some of the scientists behind that research were honored this year with the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Are you there Dark Matter? It's me, a billion pendulums.
If we want to establish a colony on the Moon, coming up with enough water is a huge challenge. Scientists have long suspected there might be water hiding on the lunar surface. Were they right? Plus, some quick recovery work led to exciting discoveries from chunks of a meteorite!
2020 marks two decades of people living and working about the ISS, and from fireballs to microgravity grown crystals, they've been keeping busy.
Earth’s northern and southern lights are some of the most magical sights on our planet. But they’re not unique to Earth, and aside from being beautiful, auroras can also give us unusual insights into these other worlds.
We have new insights into the bizarre nature of lava planets, and the icy moon Europa may yet reveal some of her salty secrets.
Thanks to X-ray telescopes, scientists in the 1970s found the first real evidence that black holes actually existed, and astronomer Andrew Fabian has used X-ray research to unlock incredible mysteries ever since, including a giant sound wave that can travel through intergalactic gas!
The perfect balance of radioactive elements inside planets like ours might make it habitable, and researchers are challenging some ideas about how Mars is losing its water.
As small as Jupiter's moons are in comparison to the giant planet, they may actually have an important role to play in keeping each other warm, heating the moons enough to have liquid oceans!
What would you do if you were in charge of a billion-dollar satellite that was spinning out of control? In 1998, NASA and ESA engineers had to solve this exact problem. How did they avert this disaster?
On December 1, 2020, Arecibo's long-story came crashing down to an end. While it's sad to see this monumental observatory go, it's worth looking back over the many discoveries it's made over the last 60 years.
Mercury’s path through our solar system is, well, a little eccentric, and some of its movements were a mystery astronomers couldn’t explain for a long time. Then, in the early 20th century, Einstein reran the numbers and proved a whole lot more!
Over just 20 years, the Stingray nebula has become anywhere from 29 to 900 times dimmer! It could teach us a ton about how nebulas evolve over time, and what happens when everything is going a lot faster than expected.
Sight, sound, and yes, taste, have all helped humanity better understand space, but what about smells? Scientists think we have a pretty good idea of what some places smell like, and decoding astronomical aromas can be a good way of working out what places are made of.
Scientists have spotted a galaxy from the early origins of the universe, and found evidence to support the existence of a 9th planet in our solar system.
The auroras are one of earth's most dazzling displays, but thanks to Joan Feynman we know that they're so much more.
2020 wasn't ALL bad news. This year scientists found ludicrously fast stars, ancient galaxy clusters, and developed a camera that could change how we study the night sky.
Jupiter's storms cover the planet, but the ones at the planet’s poles have mystified astronomers for years: why haven’t they merged together yet?
2021 is expected to bring some very exciting missions: We're putting more cool tech on Mars, going back around the Moon, and testing some sweet planetary defense from asteroids!
The International Ultraviolet Explorer was the first of its kind, giving us glimpses into phenomena like supernovas and Halley's comet. So why do we hear so little about it?"
Exoplanets have taught us a lot more about planets than our solar system could ever teach us, from what happens when they’re born, to what happens when their stars die.
Humans have been using microbes to separate minerals from mud since the middle of the last century, so we know biomining works on earth. But how will these tiny miners work in microgravity?
This week in news, scientists have found a galaxy coming to a smashing end, and a neutron star that's... The most.
We can learn a lot about our galaxy by looking to the stars, but we can also reveal a lot about our cosmic history from... Dead trees?
X-rays leaking from dead stars could breathe new life into a hypothetical particle theory, plus an ancient Titanic force may have helped twist Saturn’s axis.
Long before we were around, the universe was preserving clues about the distant past, in everything from little balls of carbon to huge groups of stars.
This week in news, the Insight rover's Mole apparatus called it quits, and research reported their findings on the first ever observed intergalactic binaries.
In the 1800s, William Parsons built a telescope larger than any in the world: The Leviathan of Parsonstown. This landmark in science history helped solve the mystery of just what a nebula could be.
Remember when astrophysicists thought they'd found signs of life on Venus? A different team re-crunched the numbers, and their results raised some questions about that claim. Also, a bunch of exoplanets are doing a really precise dance around a not-so-distant star!
Most galaxies that we know of are spirals, including the Milky Way, but how do they form and keep their shape over billions of years?
This week, researchers are getting ready to learn about earth and Mars, in places that you might not expect.
Scientists are always searching for new materials that maximize strength and thermal protection while also minimizing mass for space flight. So, when developing new heat shields, why are they looking to cuttlefish for inspiration?
Researchers think they may have found a new way to study planets after they've been "buried" in a star! Astronomers are also officially acknowledging the discovery of a distant body with a thousand-year orbit and an adorable nickname.
In space we can finally get away from pesky flies landing in our drinks! But before we can live off-Earth full time, sending flies into orbit is helping us study how space affects our human hearts and immune systems.
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission has successfully landed on Mars! But it's not alone! This week we discuss not one but three amazing missions to Mars.
Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, so could it form into stars and galaxies like regular matter?
Astronomers have theorized about an invisible star made up of theoretic particles in the past, but did we recently detect the gravitational waves of two of them colliding? Plus, extraterrestrial rocks from a decades-old mission keep yielding new discoveries!
Asteroseismology allows scientists to explore stars with sound. It can help them figure out what a star is burning and even help pin down the age of stars!
Scientists have found a world that might be half volcanoes, half ball of ice, and it could teach us a lot about how life began on earth.
Earth isn't the only planet that gets rocked by giant tsunamis. In fact, giant waves on other planets have helped us solve a few mysteries about our solar system.
Astrophysicists have discovered an exoplanet that lost its atmosphere, but then, somehow, grew it back! Also, astronomers used satellite data to find a magnetic hurricane above the north pole that we almost missed!
From what we know about Titan, it seems like its atmosphere should have disappeared millions of years ago. So, why hasn’t it?
Many researchers believe that all the water on Mars dried up, but some evidence suggests that it might have dried in.
The Astrophysics Pioneers program is funding four innovative new missions that read like a best-hits album of the most exciting astronomical frontiers: from galaxy evolution and exoplanets, to neutron star mergers and astroparticle physics.
You may have heard of the first interstellar object observed in our solar system, but did you know there's more than one? And speaking of icy rocks, new research suggests the ocean under the icy crust of Enceladus could be more dynamic than we first thought!
There’s one kind of planet we’ve found more often than any other in the universe so far: mini-Neptunes. Now, some scientists think they’ve figured out why there are just so many of them.
Dark Energy is what we call the mysterious force that seems to be pushing the universe apart. By some calculations, it makes up 70% of everything in nature. Or...maybe it doesn’t exist at all! Plus, Juno’s observations give us new information about Jupiter’s magnificent magnetic light shows!
There are a lot of incredible things in space, but neutron stars are some of the most mind-blowing. From liquid plasma oceans on the surface to a possible neutron superfluid in the core — as you go deeper into a neutron star, the physics gets truly wild.
What’s happening with the helicopter on Mars? We have an update on Ingenuity’s progress. Meanwhile, Curiosity’s camera are helping geologists find clues to the mysteries of Martian water!
The name “The Big Bang” makes it sound like there was a big explosion in one particular spot, but if that’s the case, where did it happen?
Sometimes, in order to learn something, you've got to punch a giant asteroid.
NASA's MOXIE successfully creates Oxygen on Mars, and SpaceX's Crew-Dragon successfully returns to the ISS.
We've successfully landed 10 different craft on Mars, but they all owe a bit of their success to Mars 3.
Researchers have finally determined how long a day on Venus is, give or take an episode of Brooklyn 99.
What if we could grow buildings on other worlds? Researchers are looking to fungi to help us colonize the stars.
Voyager 1 may be out of our solar system (and 40+ years old) but we're still getting plenty of new data from our interstellar space probe.
We've been trying to understand Mars for years, but some scientists think that ancient craters on earth might hold some answers to our red neighbor's history.
Mars is covered with the remnants of long-dead volcanoes, but one of them might have been alive surprisingly recently.
Dr. Emmett Chappelle developed a test to find living microbes on other planets, and while it hasn't yet been used to find life amongst the stars, we've found many applications for it here on Earth.
As a species, we like to think everything about us is one of a kind, including the Milky Way Galaxy, but new evidence shows that yet again, we're not so unique.
Before we could set foot on the moon, the Surveyor missions were sent to give future astronauts some sure footing.
The sun is beginning a new weather cycle, causing debate among scientists about how intense things are going to get, and elsewhere, scientists are looking into just how fluid our early universe was.
It’s not easy to find active plate tectonics on other worlds, but doing so may bring us one step closer to finding a planet that can support life.
Good news for fans of Venus - last week, NASA announced two new missions to learn more about our planetary neighbor! And this week, NASA's Juno mission sent back a treasure trove of data about Ganymede - the largest moon in our solar system!
We could quite possibly catch solar winds as a means for endless energy, and though it sounds like science fiction, we have the materials to do this now.
cientists have long been looking for a loophole for getting past the speed of light, and they might be one step closer to achieving that.
The effects of dark matter on galaxies is a mystifying and difficult thing to study, but the Milky Way's galactic bar might present an exciting way to quantify how much of it exists!
One of the hardest places to explore in space is actually pretty close, some call it the ignorosphere.
We’ve known about different types of supernovas for some time, but researchers now believe they have observed a previously unseen kind! And, sadly, the odds of life on Venus may not be as high as we once believed.
Before every launch, there's a crawl.
We need more solutions for our energy needs, and one idea is straight out of science fiction: Solar panels, in space.
The sun shapes the solar system in many ways, including through its mysterious solar wind, which was thought to be pushed through the force of the sun’s electric field. Recent observations revealed, though, that that hypothesis may not be entirely correct! Plus, we have a better idea of how Jupiter’s x-ray auroras, that are invisible to the human eye, actually form!
It's virtually impossible to tell where a meteorite comes from, but in 2018, scientists were able to pull a feat of forensic astronomy and do just that.
The extreme mass of neutron stars leads to enormous gravitational pulls, resulting in nearly perfect spheres. But those imperfections, or mountains, might be able to help us spot more neutron stars in the future! And back on Venus, more ideas emerge regarding the possibility of life-indicating phosphine in it’s atmosphere.
On earth it rains water, on the exoplanet WASP-76b, it rains liquid iron, but no matter what planet you're on, the rain drops there have a lot more in common than you might think.
We’ve done a surprising amount of exploration on Mars, from its atmosphere, to its surface, and miles deep into its canyons. But mapping its insides has been a quandary that we hadn’t been able to solve until last week!
Space Clue: 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia in the asteroid belt with evidence of being formed outside of it. But the real mystery is how they got there! And we again return to Ganymede with new evidence suggesting even more kinds of water in its atmosphere.
In 1984, ice was accumulating on the side of the Space Shuttle Discovery, spelling possible disaster, luckily it was the first mission of Dr. Judith Resnik, and the Canadarm.
If you want to get into space, you need combustible fuel. But if you want to stay operational in space, you need to harness the power of the sun itself.
The welding process usually involves pretty extreme levels of heat. But it turns out that in the cold vacuum of space, metals can weld together... automatically.
The insides of the our gas giant friend, Saturn, might be less of a mystery now that we’ve figured out how to use its rings to indicate its internal makeup. And the light emitted from some very old, very hungry black holes could be giving us a new way to measure some of the heaviest objects in space.
Scientists are discovering new objects in the solar system all the time. Most of these are small asteroids or icy bodies, but researchers recently spotted something unexpectedly huge heading our way.
The spiral of the Milky Way is not as smooth as we once thought because an arm not so far from home appears to be broken! And we may have discovered the answer to why a local asteroid puts on the appearance of a comet.
Extreme environments full of life on Earth have led researchers to expand the definition of habitability to something that includes many more planets, potentially leading us to evidence of living things in a dramatically shorter time! And, in other news, it’s likely that hungry sun-stars have been gobbling planets throughout their lifetimes!
Before there was a rover named Perseverance, there was a series of missions that earned that name in their own right.
Brown dwarfs are celestial oddballs, and recently one citizen scientist discovered one that is truly ancient, and weird.
Parachutes are a big part of keeping our astronauts safe, but despite being around for almost 500 years, there are still a lot of things we need to work on before they can be full proof.
We’ve created simulations to recreate the difference in time it takes for the Sun’s equator and poles to complete rotations, and the way we’ve solved is a bit surprising. And it looks like the Milky Way may not be great at mixing metals, which gives us insight into the goings on in other galaxies.
Black holes are already pretty extreme, but some stand out among their peers, driving cosmic engines that outshines the rest of the galaxy and even serving as birth control for stars!
If we hope to someday live on other worlds we need to figure out where we’re gonna lay our heads at “night.” But who would have thought we could use our own bodies as ingredients for our homes?!
We've found thousands of exoplanets over the years, but if we're going to find one that can sustain life, we need to take a look at the one planet we know that can, Earth.
Many galaxies formed fast after the Big Bang, but about half of them suddenly stopped making new stars and it looks like this is literally because they ran out of gas. And with new instruments and techniques, we are now finding lost galaxies hidden in dust!
The dark side of the moon is full of mystery, and according to some, evil robots, but, in 1959 Luna 3 was able to shed some light on it for the first time.
New simulations of a triple-star system in the constellation Orion suggest that a planet might be orbiting three stars, which could drastically increase the amount of the solar systems we believe are out there forming planets! And the winds of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot appear to speeding up, which could tell us more about what’s happening deep beneath the planet’s clouds!
When you think of a frozen object in space, you might think of Pluto, but stars themselves actually freeze.
When stars die, they tend to take everything around them with them. But new evidence appears to show a planet orbiting a white dwarf, and we’re not sure how it survived! Plus, experiments designed to detect dark matter might be capable of detecting dark energy, too!
Unfortunately, time machines don't exist, but there are other ways to learn about our sun's past.
Giant disks around baby stars filled with gas and dust provide the material to make all sorts of planets, and new evidence proves that our solar system’s had a massive gap in it! And the water vapor in Jupiter’s moon, Europa, might not all be coming from the massive geysers on its surface!
You're probably used to real galaxies having curves, except not all of them seem to have gotten the memo.
Models of the universe’s early days have only been possible with dark matter as a variable, but we still don’t have proof that dark matter exists. But recently, scientists may have found a way to replicate the results without the presence of the elusive matter. Plus, we’re leaking our DNA out in space!
All telescopes work by gathering light from the stars, but one held the crown for square footage for collecting that light for 53 years. The amazing Arecibo.
We’ve probed some 250 kilometers into Jupiter’s atmosphere, and that’s raised some new questions about the mysterious planet. And we’ve taken another important step in looking for life on Mars by using a common chemistry process for the first time in space!
Climate change is a big problem, but could we solve it be giving the earth a little nudge?
If you think punching an asteroid to knock it off the course to Earth’s destruction is purely for science fiction, you might only be right a for a little longer! Plus, scientists are being thrown for a loop with the orbits of planets around a star in the constellation Pisces.
When astronauts go into space, they're not always going alone.
Earth's thick crust might one of the reasons our planet can support life. But scientists are looking for something a little more brittle.
We’ve been sitting on samples of the lunar surface for decades and, with better technology than when they were taken, we are opening them back up to take another look!
The source of earth's water is something of a mystery, and some scientists are starting to think that the sun might have provided the special ingredients to help.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been sending home images of the universe for more than thirty years, but none of its work would have been possible without the many servicing missions that kept it up to date.
There’s a massive black hole next door that appears far too big for its host galaxy! And in another galaxy, TWO supermassive black holes formed, giving us a glimpse at a true rarity in astronomy!
Scientists have found a star that spins so fast that it can almost complete a full rotation by the time it takes you to finish reading this episode description.
The exploding “cow” around 200 million light-years away is running astronomers for a loop, but if it is what some hypothesize, we are witnessing a first for astronomy! Meanwhile, we got photographic evidence of a planet orbiting a binary star system!
There are some captivating things when you look up at the night sky, but our location in the Milky Way may be fogging up our view.
2022 is looking like a great year for space exploration! Let's dig into three of the missions that we're really excited to watch unfold!
James Webb wouldn’t be equipped to look in the infrared if not for the previous missions that have allowed us to see the universe in wavelengths that the human eye can’t see!
Developing new methods for survival in space is a constant and ever-evolving process, and a well known Earthly organism has the potential for multiple applications within space’s unforgiving environment!
As we look towards longer missions to the Moon, the shear amount of resources needed to survive becomes a much bigger question. Without space semi-trucks to haul life-giving resources to astronauts, can we utilize the Moon’s barren landscape to help us breathe?
There’s no question that comets have been regarded as some of the most beautiful things in the night sky for thousands of years. But why are their heads often green but never their tails?
It finally happened! The James Webb Space Telescope is on its way to capturing never-before-seen images of the universe! But now that it’s airborne and unfurled, what are its next steps before it can deliver the goods?
The technology we use for space exploration gets more advanced all the time, but some of our most ambitious programs actually rely on optics invented in the 19th century for lighthouses.
Sugars aren’t just for munching and crunching, they also make up our genetic code! So what does it mean to find sugars INSIDE meteorites?
The moon's South Pole-Aitken basin is the largest known crater in existence, and there's something big hidden underneath.
Some scientists are hoping to use our motion through the galaxy to help detect some of the most elusive particles of all: dark matter.
Have we been wrong about how big neutron stars are this whole time?
There's one crater that may be older than any that we know of. Except there's a snag, it might not actually be a crater at all.
In the 1970's, no vehicle had gone beyond the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, that is until Pioneer 10.
In 1999, scientists discovered something that took over 20 years to solve. Why do solar flares move like a lava lamp?
Despite computers barely being a thing when she was born, Valerie Thomas knew that she was cut out for the tech world, pushed until she got there, and contributed to some hugely important technologies that many of us could not live without.
The Crab Nebula is one of the most studied things in the sky, but it took glimpses through various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum to get a full picture of what’s hiding inside!
Space is hard on the human body, but a certain ground squirrel might have the guts to show us how to last longer in space.
Dr. Ellen Ochoa is incredible! She published over a dozen papers, co-filed three patents, and was a NASA engineer, all before becoming an astronaut and spending nearly a thousand hours in space.
We've been sending people to space since the '60s, and we're just now starting to learn what that does to their brains.
After more than two decades buzzing around above our heads, the life of the ISS will soon be coming to a close. But what does that actually look like? And what does it mean for the future of space experimentation?
What was once thought to be a black hole might in fact be a star that feeds on its own kind!
Though our Sun is something we can count on to rise and set each day, it also comes with some phenomena that can catch us by surprise: solar winds. To better predict when these winds will travel all the way to Earth, we sent the Parker Solar Probe to our big flaming ball in the sky with a big mission.
It seems the more we learn about black holes, the more there is to find out. In this case, what in the universe could have put one on its side?
We've launched thousands of spacecraft over the years. And as the space junk around our planet builds up, researchers are working on ways to clean things up using some obvious things, like lasers, and some less obvious ones, like solar sails.
Despite how easy it looks in movies, growing plants on other planets is trickier than you might imagine.
We’ve done a lot of searching for life in the universe and we need to continue to if we hope to make contact. But not all of our attempts were expected to succeed. That’s where Beacon in the Galaxy comes in.
While most spacecraft are designed and built from scratch for one particular mission, the Phoenix Lander was pieced together from previous missions and rose from the ashes...all the way to Mars.
Though we’ve been able detect thousands of exoplanets in the last few decades, we’ve now directly imaged an exoplanet that changes our whole perspective on how we think planets like Jupiter form!
With exoplanets, often we want to know if they are Earth-like and whether they might host life, but we can also learn a lot from planets that are nothing like Earth.
As we continue our search for life out in the universe, it's important that we leave no stone, or moon, unturned.
It turns out if you’d like to take a deeper look into the universe, the universe itself might actually help you do that!
If we're going to send astronauts out to Mars someday, we'll need to figure out how to send a pharmacy with them.
You'd think that two planets with similar stats, orbits, and parent stars would grow up to be pretty similar, but these twins have atmospheres that beg to differ.
Scientists have discovered over 5,000 exoplanets in the last few decades, but where are the Exo-Earths?
For most of human history, we didn't know that galaxies were a thing. So over the past century, astronomers have been working to understand how galaxies come to be and how they evolve over time. And for a full decade, there was one telescope helping to light the way.
It’s handy having a view of Earth from space. This particular view may be one that changes the way we predict weather phenomena.
Understanding gravity can sometimes be a bit of a balancing act, much like the fundamental laws of physics and how they inform what it is exactly that Earth orbits.
For 13 years, the Cassini probe circled Saturn and sent back fascinating data about the seasons of Saturn as it moved through a 29 Earth year Saturnian year.
Astronomer Dr. Jane Rigby challenges the limits of the naked eye. Having influenced most famous telescopes that come to mind, her work is defined by breaking boundaries both physical and beyond.
It’s nice to think that every rover we land on Mars is totally unique, but isn’t it even nicer to know that they’ve got a twin or even a triplet here on Earth making sure they’re up for the job ahead?
Several rovers on Mars's surface are currently in operation, including one you might not have heard of: China’s Zhurong rover. It's already spent over a year on the Martian surface and is bringing us ever closer to understanding the history of our planetary next-door neighbor.
Here on Earth, we’re used to seeing both lunar and solar eclipses. But further out are eclipses that don’t behave at all the way we expected them to.
The first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope are finally here! Let's take a look, talk about what we're seeing, and compare them to the most detailed version of these images we had before.
Sleep is a crucial activity for our brains to function properly. But when you’re on the ISS, you face a myriad of distractions and obligations that make it difficult to get good shuteye. So how do these astronauts ever get restful sleep?
Black holes are everywhere, including at the center of our galaxy. But because they’re invisible they’re quite difficult to study. Looking at the disks of material surrounding them, however, can give us tons of clues about how they function, how they form, and how accurate Einstein’s theory of general relativity really was.
After we retrieved samples of the moon, it was quite a while before we could land on anything else and bring bits of it back home.
Occultations may sound spooky, but in actuality they can inform us of some of the most unknown parts of the universe.
In the 1970s, astronomers discovered a mysterious source of gamma rays that, 50 years later, still hasn’t revealed all of its secrets.
It's always an asteroid heading straight toward us that we worry about, never what happens to us when we head straight toward the asteroid. OSIRIS-REx's experience with Bennu tells us it's worth a thought.
Mars’s moon, Phobos, is striped with grooves all across its surface. But if one theory about where they came from is true, does that mean this moon might be on its way out?
The Sun isn’t the only celestial body in the solar system to boast spots of its own. Mercury, too, has its fair share, and they’re worth wondering about.
Ancient perceptions of lunar eclipses weren’t as primitive as one might think. Some rigorous math was applied to these cosmic events that shaped our understanding of the solar system.
The earth is always moving, and our view of the night sky is slowly but surely changing.
SOFIA or The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy is coming to an end, but let's look back on some of the amazing discoveries of this flying telescope.
In 1997, NASA bought a Boeing 747SP for what might be both a super cool and super absurd purpose. Turn it into SOFIA, a flying telescope.
Venus may have been named after the Roman goddess of beauty, but once humans started sending spacecraft to the planet next door, we quickly learned that beauty… hurts.
Figuring out the age of a blinking speck in the sky is a difficult feat, especially if considering how many types of stars there are. This is where a Hertzsprung-Russell meets a gyrochronologist.
If we’re going to send people to Mars someday, we’re going to need to be very conscious of the challenges presented in this endeavor. And at the top of that list is the ferocious nature of dust on the barren planet.
Supernovae are only rare to the passive stargazer, but if you’re an astronomer studying them, you get to see some of the most brilliant explosions in the universe. Here are five of the most significant supernovae known to science.
If you’ve been distracted looking at the amazing photos The James Webb Space Telescope has taken, not to worry. Here are three other stellar stories from the last year of space science!
As we wrap up 2022, we'd like to celebrate a few of the cosmic “winners” discovered this year, at least while they still hold their titles.
Earth didn't always have the land beneath your feet, but what might have caused it to form is a bit of a mystery.
2022 was a pretty exciting year for space science, but what news might we expect in the coming year?
In 1962, John Glenn went into orbit on an Atlas rocket, and thus began a family of rockets that lasted for 60 years!
We usually only get to use our sense of sight in exploring the universe, but that hasn’t prevented scientists from trying to listen in.
Astronomers have found more than 5,000 planets in the last three decades, but that’s not nearly as exciting as potentially coming across the first extraterrestrial creatures. And we may finally be in a position to make that discovery.
You might be pretty confident that when a moon is there it’s there to stay, but that’s not always the case. Moons may have a history of disappearing.
The James Webb Space Telescope isn't just for finding Pinterest worthy pictures, we're finding some amazing details in the sometimes blurry background photos.
Sometimes looking into a pool of a toxic liquid holds the secrets of the universe–or maybe just this one time.
R136a1 is the most massive star that astronomers have ever discovered. It's so massive you might think the laws of physics wouldn't allow it. But it turns out that its current mass estimate is actually so low that it threatens our understanding of how the universe got to be where it is, today!
A majority of modern astronauts experience any one of a suite of symptoms scientists collectively call Space Motion Sickness, or SMS. But despite knowing about it for nearly as long as humans have gone into space, we still don't know exactly what causes it, or how to predict which astronauts might lose their lunch.