Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 22, 2018

BepiColombo Spacecraft Headed to Mercury Snaps 1st Photo, a Selfie

A newly launched mission to Mercury has beamed home its first photo from space. The European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured a selfie showing an extended solar array and an insulation-wrapped sun sensor on Saturday (Oct. 20), a day after lifting off from Kourou, French Guiana. The heart of BepiColombo is two...

Nov 8, 2019

Mercury Transit on Monday: The Gear You Need to Watch It Safely

Mercury will pass across the face of the sun Monday (Nov. 11) in its first such transit since 2016. The Mercury transit — which begins Monday at 7:35 a.m. EST (1235 GMT) and ends at 1:02 p.m. EST (1804 GMT) — is accessible to amateur astronomers, as long as they...

Jun 14, 2021

China's Mars rover Zhurong just snapped an epic self-portrait on the Red Planet (photos)

China's Mars rover Zhurong poses for a self portrait with its lander in this photo from Utopia Planitia released on June 11, 2021. (Image credit: CNSA)China's Zhurong rover, which landed on Mars on May 14, has sent a new batch of images to Earth — including a family photo featuring...

Jun 23, 2021

Mars helicopter Ingenuity nails 8th flight on the Red Planet

NASA's experimental Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, has now flown eight times on the Red Planet, traveling farther than scientists hoped would be possible. The little chopper made its most recent Mars sortie on Monday (June 21). During the flight, Ingenuity remained aloft for 77.4 seconds, flew 525 feet (160 meters), and...

Jun 25, 2021

NASA spacecraft spots China's Mars rover Zhurong heading south on Red Planet (photo)

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of China's Zhurong Mars rover (bottom) and its landing platform on June 11, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)China's first-ever Mars rover was on the move earlier this month, imagery by a NASA spacecraft shows. The rover, named Zhurong, is part...

Jun 29, 2021

Mars may have dozens of lakes beneath its south pole

Much more liquid water may lie beneath the south pole of Mars than scientists had thought — or there may be something going on down there that they don't fully understand. In 2018, researchers analyzing radar data gathered by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft announced they'd found evidence of a big...

Jun 30, 2021

Hear the 1st sounds from China's Mars rover Zhurong (Video)

China's first Mars rover has captured its first sounds of the Red Planet and beamed back stunning views of a drive on the dusty world. A new video released by China's state-run CCTV news channel on June 27 shows the first sounds recorded by the Mars rover Zhurong as it...

Jul 16, 2021

Curiosity rover discovers that evidence of past life on Mars may have been erased

Evidence of ancient life may have been scrubbed from parts of Mars, a new NASA study has found. The space agency's Curiosity rover made the surprising discovery while investigating clay-rich sedimentary rocks around its landing site in Gale Crater, a former lake that was made when an asteroid struck the...

Jul 22, 2021

NASA's Perseverance rover is about to collect its first Martian rock sample

After about five months settling into its new home on the Red Planet, NASA's Perseverance rover is about to collect its first-ever sample of Martian rock in one of the most intricate long-distance science projects ever conducted, according to a NASA statement. Over the next two weeks, Perseverance, or Percy...

Jul 22, 2021

Scientists mapped the mysterious interior of Mars for the first time ever

Like a bruised peach sliced apart to reveal an enormous yellow pit, Mars shares its inner mysteries in the first-ever map of an alien planet's interior — released as part of three new studies published July 22 in the journal Science. This premiere look at the Martian interior is the...

Jul 30, 2021

Buried 'lakes' on Mars may just be frozen clay

Bright reflections that radar detected beneath the south pole of Mars may not be underground lakes as previously thought but deposits of clay instead, a new study finds. For decades, scientists have suspected that water lurks below the polar ice caps of Mars, just as it does here on Earth....

Aug 4, 2021

Curiosity rover finds cute little rock 'lizard' on Mars

It's a lizard, it's a cat, it's a … whimsical Martian rock! The Mars Curiosity rover recently got a glimpse of this cute little rock feature in Gale Crater, where the rover has been exploring since 2012. The tiny textured arch is only about 6.5 inches (16.5 centimeters) tall, but...

Aug 8, 2021

Perseverance rover aims for its 1st sample of Mars, comes up empty

The Perseverance rover's first sample-snagging attempt didn't go according to plan. The car-sized Perseverance landed inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater this past February with two main tasks: to hunt for signs of past Mars life and to collect and cache samples for future return to Earth. The NASA rover...

Aug 14, 2021

Why Perseverance rover fumbled 1st sampling attempt on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover's first sample collection didn't go as planned due to trouble with a unique and unexpectedly powdery Mars rock. Perseverance launched to the Red Planet on Feb. 18 to search for signs of ancient Mars life and collect and store samples for future study back on Earth. However,...

Aug 27, 2021

Martian 'blueberries' may hold signs of ancient water, new study suggests

The surface of Mars is dotted with millions of tiny, spherical crystals averaging about a tenth of an inch (2.5 millimeters) in diameter. Even though these teensy spherules help give the Red Planet its rusty color, their seemingly blue appearance in a false-color NASA image from 2004 has earned them...