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Space Missions & Discoveries

Planet Earth

Supermoon: What It Really Is, Why It Happens, and When to Catch the Next One

A supermoon is a full moon that lines up with the Moon's closest approach to Earth, making it look a little bigger and noticeably brighter than an ordinary full moon. At its best, a supermoon can appear up to 14% larger and about 30%...
Astronomy for Beginners

What Is a Constellation? A Beginner’s Guide to the Sky’s 88 Star Patterns

A constellation is a group of stars that forms a recognizable pattern in the night sky, one we've given a name, usually after a mythological figure, animal, or object. There are 88 of them officially recognized, and together they map out the entire sky....
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Space Missions & Discoveries

How Long Does It Take to Get to Mars: Why the Red Planet Is a Seven-Month Trip

The Short Answer Getting to Mars usually takes about seven months. Most robotic missions have...
Space Missions & Discoveries

The Mars Rover’s Last Words: The True Story Behind “My Battery Is Low and It’s Getting Dark”

There's a line about a dying robot on Mars that has made grown people...
Space Missions & Discoveries

China Just Landed a Reusable Rocket: Inside LandSpace’s Historic ZhuQue-3 Booster Touchdown

For years, the sight of a rocket booster falling back to Earth and landing...
Space Missions & Discoveries

Liquid Nitrogen Is Flowing on Pluto: The First Sign of Recent Liquid on the Dwarf Planet’s Frozen Heart

Pluto sits so far from the Sun that sunlight takes more than five hours...
Space Missions & Discoveries

149 Years Ago Today, a Foggy Washington Sky Nearly Cost Us a Discovery

On the night of August 17, 1877, at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington,...
Space Missions & Discoveries

There’s a Recording of Someone Falling in Love, a Billion Miles From Earth

Attached to the side of both Voyager spacecraft, now drifting through interstellar space, sits...
Space Missions & Discoveries

NASA Destroyed a Perfectly Working Spacecraft on Purpose. Here’s Why That Was the Right Call.

On September 15, 2017, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory watched a signal...
Space Missions & Discoveries

The $10 Billion Telescope With 344 Ways to Die

On Christmas morning 2021, a rocket lifted off from French Guiana carrying humanity's most...
Space Missions & Discoveries

The Photo That Needed an Earth-Sized Camera to Take

Nobody had ever seen a black hole. Not because telescopes weren't powerful enough in...
Space Missions & Discoveries

The Week Humanity Watched a Comet Die on Live Television

For seven days in July 1994, astronomers around the world barely slept. Twenty-one pieces...
Space Missions & Discoveries

A Musician’s Hobby Doubled the Size of the Known Solar System Overnight

For nearly six thousand years of recorded human history, the solar system ended at...
Space Missions & Discoveries

She Measured the Universe. Nobody Let Her Touch a Telescope.

Henrietta Leavitt spent her career at Harvard doing work considered too tedious for the...
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Latest articles

Planet Earth

Supermoon: What It Really Is, Why It Happens, and When to Catch the Next One

A supermoon is a full moon that lines up with the Moon's closest approach...
Astronomy for Beginners

What Is a Constellation? A Beginner’s Guide to the Sky’s 88 Star Patterns

A constellation is a group of stars that forms a recognizable pattern in the...
Planets & Solar System

How Many Planets Are There? The Real Answer Is Bigger Than Eight

There are eight planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,...
Galaxies & Deep Space

What Is a Galaxy? A Simple Guide to the Great Islands of Stars

A galaxy is an enormous collection of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter, all...