space exploration

Ganymede likely has some special characteristics. It isn’t just Jupiter’s biggest moon, but the biggest in the entire solar system by far—about the size of Mercury and our moon combined. It harbors about six times as much liquid water as…

This is where Moonlight will come in. The system may involve three navigation satellites in lunar orbit plus one dedicated to communication. That way, multiple satellites can ping Earth at any given time, and the system would be resilient…

That said, he expects that the futuristic project could take more than a half-century to realize. It poses a few ambitious physics and engineering challenges, including the development of such a massive laser, the construction of a…

The moon is interesting because there are valuable resources people want, like the ice on the poles. But even though the moon hasn’t been mined yet, and it seems like a big pile of resources that we can all just get our hands into, it’s…

If the boxy Opportunity rover could elicit years of anthropomorphized love and goodwill, then surely Earthlings will warm to the idea of sending a snake-shaped robot to the moon. This robot—the brainchild of students at Northeastern…

Instead, with his “fluidic telescope” concept, one need only launch a frame structure—such as an umbrella-shaped satellite dish—and a tank of mirror liquid, like gallium alloys and ionic liquids. After launch, the liquid would be injected…

Some people would rather invest these resources in solving global problems, not launching astronauts to other worlds. People in the 1960s questioned the Apollo program for similar reasons—it was also a time of systemic inequality and fears…

“For me, this is a dream measurement,” says David Paige, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles who has been part of the mission since its inception nearly a decade ago. “It’s an opportunity to make a real rapid…

FP StaffNov 28, 2022 12:55:11 ISTNASA’s Artemis 1 mission is probably the most significant space mission of this decade. Thanks to this mission, humans will be returning to the moon for an extended period of time, and will be participating…

FP StaffNov 07, 2022 15:30:19 ISTScience fiction first told us that we as humans would start colonising and settling in space, either on some space stations or on planets that can support life as we know it. Soon, scientists started telling…