Our solar system has a suite of eight planets—rocky Mars and Earth, the ice giants, and massive gas planets—but other stars often have a much smaller group. Some suns have just one exoplanet orbiting around them. These loner worlds are often one specific type: A huge gas giant that orbits very close to its star, […]
See hot plasma bubble on the sun’s surface in powerful closeup images
Just in time for the light-filled days before the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) has released some stellar new images of the sun. Observations from the biggest and most powerful solar telescope on Earth show the movement of plasma in the solar atmosphere, intricate […]
Mars rover snaps pics of dusty craters that may have once roared with water
In its two years and three months of exploring the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance Rover has been one busy moving Martian science lab. It has detected signs of past chemical reactions, begun building a Martian rock depot, and recorded audio of a dust devil for the first time. Here are a few of the “six-wheeled […]
How hundreds of college students are helping solve a centuries-old mystery about the sun
A team of more than 1,000 astronomers and college students just took a step closer to solving one of the long-lasting mysteries of astronomy: Why is the sun’s outer layer, known as the corona, so ridiculously hot? The solar surface is 10,000°F, but a thousand miles up, the sun’s corona flares hundreds of times hotter. […]
NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus
At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath. As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and […]
Robot plants could be used to grow infrastructure in space from scratch
This article was original featured on MIT Press.This article is excerpted from Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo’s book “Tales From a Robotic World.” In the early 2010s, a new trend in robotics began to emerge. Engineers started creating robotic versions of salamanders, dragonflies, octopuses, geckos, and clams — an ecosystem of biomimicry so diverse the Economist portrayed […]
Name a better duo than NASA’s hard-working Mars rover and helicopter
On April 19, 2021, a little more than a century after the Wright Brothers’ first test flight on Earth, humans managed to zoom a helicopter around on another planet. The four-pound aircraft, known as Ingenuity, is part of NASA’s Mars2020 exploration program, along with the Perseverance rover. The dynamic duo made history again this month, […]