Neil deGrasse Tyson talks candidly about the challenges facing astronomy and the search for life outside the solar system.
Tourists may soon be wining, dining, and even playing Quidditch in space. NASA’s search for space-habitat designs is starting a new tourism industry.
A critical milestone for our Commercial Crew Program, a Northrop Grumman Corporation cargo spacecraft makes a delivery to the International Space Station and a new wide-eyed view of the southern sky … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Watch:
Samples of lunar dust and rock returned to Earth during the Apollo missions quickly offered scientists new insights into the makeup of our Moon, but what do they look like under the microscopes of today? NASA has just cracked open the first of two untouched lunar samples for study with modern scientific instruments, with one eye on the upcoming Artemis missions that will return humans to the Moon in 2024.
This NASA initiative is known as the Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis project. It concerns two samples collected in the early 1970s that were quickly sealed and stored in the form of tubes of rock and soil, representing two-feet of vertical layering from the lunar surface.
“We are able to make measurements today that were just not possible during the years of the Apollo program,” says Dr. Sarah Noble, ANGSA program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The analysis of these samples will maximize the science return from Apollo, as well as enable a new generation of scientists and curators to refine their techniques and help prepare future explorers for lunar missions anticipated in the 2020s and beyond.”
Scientists analyzing data from a defunct satellite say we should all consider that our universe might be round, rather than flat. The consequences, they explain in a new paper, could be crisis-inducing.
Current theories of the universe, which describe its age, size, and how it evolves over time, are built around a flat spacetime. A new paper reiterates that data from the final Planck satellite release might be better explained by a round universe than a flat universe. Though not everyone agrees with the paper’s conclusions, the authors write that the consequences of assuming a flat universe when the universe is actually round could be dire.
Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.
We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.
Scientists are testing a new, durable, recyclable and efficient material that could soon power habitats on the Moon.
