Space

Sierra Space and NASA have renegotiated their contract for the Dream Chaser spaceplane that will allow the spacecraft to make its first orbital flight next year as a free flier instead of visiting the International Space Station (ISS).

It’s hard to think of a more challenging environment for an automotive battery than the Moon, and preparations for NASA’s Artemis program give us a chance to contrast the pioneering technology of the 1970s with where we are 50 years later.

Previous research has shown that microgravity affects the immune system but what about the stem cells that build it? Until recently, no one had tested how spaceflight affects the aging and fitness of these crucial cells, and the news is not so great.

NASA's Perseverance Rover might have made serious headway in its mission to find signs of ancient life on the planet. It's stumbled upon a rock with colorful spots on it, which may have been left behind by microbial life billions of years ago.

How do you control a nuclear space propulsion system? Very carefully. To help with this, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has built a simulated nuclear reactor test bed to develop the engines that could send astronauts to Mars and beyond.

CPR is a technique that has saved countless lives since the modern version was developed in the 1960s. However, it turns out it doesn't work very well in zero gravity, so a team of European cardiologists has been testing alternatives for astronauts.

Astronomers have discovered a new celestial object in the galaxy NGS 4945 about 12 million light-years away. Its light is polarized at an almost impossible level that hints at a perfectly aligned magnetic field. The object has been nicknamed "Punctum".

ESA is working on a new system with the unfortunate acronym of Collision Risk Estimation and Automated Mitigation (CREAM) that is designed to automate the labor-intensive process of monitoring, assessing, and responding to possible space debris.

Imagine sipping your coffee when suddenly - BOOM! A sonic tremor rattles your home. That’s exactly what happened to one McDonough resident when a meteorite the size of a cherry tomato punched through his roof with the force of a close-range gunshot.

If Earth needs to borrow a cup of sugar, it's comforting to know that there may be a convenient, possibly habitable, world orbiting Alpha Centauri only 4.34 light years away – at least, if the findings from the James Webb Space Telescope pan out.

As if hard vacuum, intense cosmic radiation, corrosive dust, meteors, and temperatures whiplashing hundreds of degrees between night and day weren't enough, personnel at future Moon bases will be at significant peril from moonquakes.

Who watches the watchmen and who spies on the spy satellites? It turns out it's an optical package called Morning Sparrow made by Scout Space and carried by Dawn Aerospace's Aurora spaceplane to the edge of space to snap low-orbit spysats.

To keep solar power stations from getting lazy, Sandia National Laboratories scientist John Sandusky is looking to give heliostat mirrors a side hustle. At the National Solar Thermal Test Facility he's experimenting with getting them to hunt for asteroids at night.

Hoping to push Mars exploration into top gear and do recon for a future crewed landing, AeroVironment has released its concept for a mission consisting of half a dozen autonomous helicopters that would land on the Red Planet under their own power.

Using the thermal equivalent of giving it a sharp whack, NASA repaired the camera of its Jupiter-orbiting Juno probe from 370 million miles (590 million km) away after the instrument was put out of commission by the gas giant's radiation belts.