NASA Did Not Say It Found Life on Mars. But It’s Very Excited About This Rock.
The rock, studied by NASA’s Perseverance rover, has been closely analyzed by scientists on Earth who say that nonmicrobial processes could also explain its features.
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The rock, studied by NASA’s Perseverance rover, has been closely analyzed by scientists on Earth who say that nonmicrobial processes could also explain its features.
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With the Falcon 9 rocket set to fly again, and testing of the Starliner capsule progressing, the agency is seeking to turn the page on a brief, troubled chapter in orbit.
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ShadowCam, a NASA instrument aboard a South Korean spacecraft, is taking pictures of the moon where the sun doesn’t shine.
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Delays and concerns about NASA’s future budgets doomed the VIPER mission, which aimed to search for ice near the moon’s south pole.
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Is That a Meteor Over Manhattan? New Yorkers Glance Up, Then Shrug.
It had already been a weird few weeks in New York. Then a fireball streaked across the sky.
By Liam Stack and
Watch These Supernovas Explode Across Time
For the 25th anniversary of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA produced ghostly time-lapse videos of two centuries-old stellar eruptions.
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Will a Movie Faking the Moon Landing Propel a Debunked Conspiracy Theory?
The screenwriters of “Fly Me to the Moon” say they emphasized the facts of the Apollo 11 landing, but experts worry that clips can be misused.
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The malfunction, the first since 2016, ended a streak of more than 300 successful launches for the Falcon 9 rocket.
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NASA Mission to Europa Imperiled by Chips Aboard Spacecraft
Transistors on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, scheduled to launch in October, may not be able to endure the harsh radiation around the planet Jupiter.
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Elon Musk’s Plan to Put a Million Earthlings on Mars in 20 Years
SpaceX employees are working on designs for a Martian city, including dome habitats and spacesuits, and researching whether humans can procreate off Earth. Mr. Musk has volunteered his sperm.
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Wildlife Protections Take a Back Seat to SpaceX’s Ambitions
A New York Times investigation found that Elon Musk exploited federal agencies’ competing missions to achieve his goals for space travel.
By Eric Lipton and
China Becomes First Country to Retrieve Rocks From the Moon’s Far Side
The Chang’e-6 mission’s sample, which might hold clues about the origins of the moon and Earth, is the latest achievement of China’s lunar exploration program.
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A Global Push Fixed the Ozone Hole. Satellites Could Threaten It.
A sharp increase in hardware orbiting Earth could mean more harmful metals lingering in the atmosphere, according to a new study.
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Sync Your Calendar With the Solar System
Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that’s out of this world.
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Highlights From the Total Solar Eclipse’s Dark Path Through the U.S., Mexico and Canada
People all over North America spent the afternoon awed by the movement of the moon’s shadow, the last time it will pass through so much of the continent until the 2040s.
The Eclipse Across North America
What people in the path of totality were seeing and saying as the eclipse unfolded across the continent.
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See the Total Solar Eclipse’s Shadow From Space
An American weather satellite is capturing the movement of the moon’s shadow across North America during the total eclipse of the sun on Monday.
By K.K. Rebecca Lai and
Fjords, Pharaohs or Koalas? Time to Plan for Your Next Eclipse.
If you can’t get enough of totality, or missed out this time, you’ll have three more chances in the next four years in destinations like Iceland, Spain, Egypt and Australia.
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Did You Really Need to Be There to See the Eclipse?
For much of the 20th century, Rochester, N.Y., was the “imaging capital of the world.” For three and a half minutes on Monday, it was living up to its old nickname.
By Christopher Valentine and
The Magnetic Heart of the Milky Way
A new map of the center of the Milky Way galaxy reveals details of its magnetic fields
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A Tantalizing ‘Hint’ That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong
Scientists may have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of that mysterious cosmic force. That could be good news for the fate of the universe.
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A Lifetime Under the Moon’s Shadow
The late Jay Pasachoff inspired generations of students to become astronomers by dragging them to the ends of the Earth for a few precarious moments of ecstasy.
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Cosmic Forecast: Blurry With a Chance of Orbital Chaos
Astronomers have gotten better at tracking the motions of stars just beyond the solar system. But that’s made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.
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The Southern Delta Aquarids and the Alpha Capricornids are reaching their peak this week. The Perseids, one of the best shows of the year, are also ramping up.
By Katrina Miller
The Arizona senator, a Navy veteran and former astronaut, has an almost impossibly strong political résumé. But an overlooked asset is his expertise on the Southern border.
By Jonathan Weisman and Jazmine Ulloa
The social media and rocket companies are based in California, which the billionaire criticized for its recent transgender legislation.
By Kate Conger and Eli Tan
NASA sent the song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” from a radio dish in California last week. It took 14 minutes to travel the 158 million miles.
By Mike Ives
The second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket failed on an attempt to deploy the company’s Starlink internet satellites, ending a streak of more than 300 successful Falcon 9 launches.
By Reuters
In a news conference from aboard the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams said they had confidence in the troubled spacecraft to get them home.
By Kenneth Chang
In books and articles he wrote about the militarization of space and believed that investing in exploration would ultimately “protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.”
By Sam Roberts
The European Space Agency launched the Ariane 6 from French Guiana.
By Reuters
Using ground-based radars, he pioneered measurement techniques that scientists now use to chart geographical changes on Earth.
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Ariane 6 reached orbit on Tuesday. But a problem made the European Space Agency rocket deviate from its flight plan late in the mission.
By Katrina Miller
The development of Elon Musk’s facility in South Texas did not play out as local officials were originally told it would.
By Eric Lipton
Scientists used techniques from the field of gravitational wave astronomy to argue that the Antikythera mechanism contained a lunar calendar.
By Becky Ferreira
Our planet whirls around the sun in an ellipse, rather than a circle. On Friday the planet reached its farthest point from its star, known as aphelion.
By Katrina Miller
Satellite signals run the modern world. See just how vulnerable they are.
By Selam Gebrekidan, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Pablo Robles and Jeremy White
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An object found on a hiking trail west of Asheville, N.C., had traveled to the International Space Station, the space agency said.
By Amanda Holpuch
The commercial company Space Pioneer said the accident occurred because of a structural failure in the connection between the rocket and its testing platform.
By Yan Zhuang and John Liu
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will spend additional weeks in orbit as teams on the ground study malfunctioning thrusters on the Starliner spacecraft.
By Kenneth Chang
The cause of the incident, which added to a growing amount of dangerous space junk in low Earth orbit, remains unknown.
By Katrina Miller
The smaller of the pair was spotted only this month and could be visible with binoculars as it passes by our planet within the distance to the moon.
By Robin George Andrews
Mike Bettwy, a government meteorologist who focuses on potential threats from space weather, says that we are more prepared than ever — and that forecasting is only getting better.
By Katrina Miller
It was the second scheduled spacewalk by NASA astronauts aboard the space station that faced an interruption this month.
By Kenneth Chang
An Austrian forest ranger picked up the rock in 1976. Decades later, scientists discovered the object’s origin story while digging through old photos.
By Katherine Kornei
We have Earth’s off-kilter tilt to thank for the summer solstice, as well as the different seasons.
By Katrina Miller
The farthest man-made object in space had been feared lost forever after a computer problem in November effectively rendered the 46-year-old probe useless.
By Orlando Mayorquín
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He helped send the twin spacecraft on their way in 1977. Decades and billions of miles later, they are still probing — “Earth’s ambassadors to the stars,” as he put it.
By Sam Roberts
Days after light shows filled Earth’s skies with wonder, the red planet was hit by another powerful outburst of the sun.
By Robin George Andrews
An extensive examination of medical data gathered from the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021 revealed temporary cognitive declines and genetic changes in the crew.
By Kenneth Chang
Computer simulations suggest that a collision with another planetary object early in Earth’s history may have provided the heat to set off plate tectonics.
By Lucas Joel
During the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, his color photograph of an emerging Earth, known as “Earthrise,” became an icon and driving force for the environmental movement.
By Richard Goldstein
Two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, opened the hatch of the spacecraft and boarded the outpost in orbit.
By Kenneth Chang
The company achieved a key set of ambitious goals on the fourth test flight of a vehicle that is central to Elon Musk’s vision of sending people to Mars.
By Kenneth Chang
The launch marks a long-delayed win for the aerospace giant, and the next step in NASA’s reliance on the private sector for its human spaceflight program.
By Kenneth Chang
As it studies cosmic microwaves, the Simons Observatory in Chile aims to help prove or disprove cosmic inflation, a notion that the universe expanded rapidly in the moment after the Big Bang.
By Kenneth Chang
The landing brings the Chang’e-6 mission a step closer to being the first to return a sample from the part of the moon that’s never seen from Earth.
By Yan Zhuang
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At a time when the U.S. government is concerned about its reliance on a mercurial billionaire for access to space, new competitors say Elon Musk’s SpaceX is using tactics intended to squash them.
By Eric Lipton
After mediocre weather during the event’s first two nights in May, New Yorkers get another opportunity to celebrate longer days, warmer weather and epic summer sunsets.
By Katrina Miller
New software let scientists re-examine old radar images, providing some of the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes continue to reshape the hellish planet.
By Robin George Andrews
Officials from NASA and Boeing say they have worked out a solution to a helium leak that has kept the Starliner astronaut capsule grounded.
By Kenneth Chang
Russia has deployed advanced tech to interfere with Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Ukrainian officials said, leading to more outages on the northern front battle line.
By Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano
The European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope’s latest release shows off the device’s capabilities.
By Katrina Miller
A scientist finds beauty in the “visual synonyms” that exist in images seen through microscopes and telescopes.
By Katrina Miller
A brilliant flash of blue, green and white on Saturday night came from a shard of an as yet unidentified comet that was moving around 100,000 miles per hour, experts said.
By Robin George Andrews
Edward Dwight was among the first pilots that the United States was training to send to space in 1961, but he was passed over. On Sunday, he finally made it on a Blue Origin flight.
By Amanda Holpuch
Citing rapid advances by China and Russia, the United States is building an extensive capacity to fight battles in space.
By Eric Lipton
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A growing number of researchers in the field are using their expertise to fight the climate crisis.
By Katrina Miller and Delger Erdenesanaa
The storm interfered with navigational systems used in tractors and other farming equipment, leaving some farmers temporarily unable to plant their crops.
By Livia Albeck-Ripka
Electrical utilities said they weathered earlier conditions as persistent geomagnetic storms were expected to cause another light show in evening skies.
By Katrina Miller, Ivan Penn and Emmett Lindner
Powerful solar flare activity made the aurora borealis visible unusually far south.
By The New York Times
The unusual sight of aurora borealis was visible around the world.
By The New York Times
Officials warned of potential blackouts or interference with navigation and communication systems this weekend, as well as auroras as far south as Southern California or Texas.
By Katrina Miller and Judson Jones
The Chang’e-6 mission aims to bring back samples from the lunar far side.
By CCTV via Associated Press
Three long-running satellites will soon be switched off, forcing scientists to figure out how to adjust their views of our changing planet.
By Raymond Zhong
If successful, the Chang’e-6 mission will be the first in history to return a sample from a part of the moon that we never get to see from Earth.
By Katrina Miller
The event will be active when the moon is just a sliver in the sky, but it is less easy to see in the Northern Hemisphere than other meteor showers.
By Katrina Miller
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With the help of Google Cloud, scientists churned through hundreds of thousands of images of the night sky to reveal that the solar system is filled with unseen objects.
By Kenneth Chang
Six decades ago, Mr. Dwight’s shot at becoming the first Black astronaut in space was thwarted by racism and politics. Now, at 90, he’s finally going up.
By Matt Richtel
A nearly full moon could interfere with the shower during its peak. It is forecast to be active until near the end of the month.
By Katrina Miller
Soon, this devil-horned comet won’t be visible for another seven decades.
By Katrina Miller
The agency will seek new ideas for its Mars Sample Return program, expected to be billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
By Kenneth Chang
He arranged for artists to have access to astronauts, launchpads and more. “Their imaginations enable them to venture beyond a scientific explanation,” he once said.
By Richard Sandomir
Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, hunts for aliens in space by studying Earth across time.
By Becky Ferreira
You can watch a projection of the eclipse using some common household items.
By Katrina Miller
Thales, a Greek philosopher 2,600 years ago, is celebrated for predicting a famous solar eclipse and founding what came to be known as science.
By William J. Broad
A total solar eclipse in Aruba was streamed to millions of users of the World Wide Web in 1998, helping to start an ongoing era of viral videos of space and astronomy.
By Katrina Miller
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President Biden wants companies that use American airspace for rocket launches to start paying taxes into a federal fund that finances the work of air traffic controllers.
By Minho Kim
When the total solar eclipse happens on Monday, animals at homes, farms and zoos may act strangely. Researchers can’t wait to see what happens when day quickly turns to night.
By Juliet Macur and Emily Anthes
The agency’s future moon buggies will reach speeds of 9.3 miles per hour and will be capable of self-driving.
By Kenneth Chang
To study an eclipse you need cameras, rockets, giant balloons and beehives.
By Katrina Miller
Unpacking Netflix’s new hit with The Times’s cosmic affairs correspondent.
By Alex Barron, Lynn Levy, Efim Shapiro and Dennis Overbye
The rendezvous between the sun and the moon in 2017 captivated a small region in the Midwest. Lucky for Americans at the eclipse crossroads, they get to see it again.
By Katrina Miller and Julia Rendleman
A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience this year’s event.
By Robyn Ross
The Delta IV Heavy, a rocket that briefly bursts into flame just before it lifts off, is set to launch for the last time soon.
By Kenneth Chang
On April 8, parts of 13 U.S. states, Mexico and Canada will plunge into midday darkness. Miss this spectacle and you’ll have to wait till 2044 for the next one so close to home.
By Derek M. Norman
Threats are mounting in space. GPS signals are vulnerable to attack. Their time-keeping is essential for stock trading, power transmission and more.
By Selam Gebrekidan, John Liu and Chris Buckley
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The portrait that emerged from her discovery, called Leavitt’s Law, showed that the universe was hundreds of times bigger than astronomers had imagined.
By Kirk Johnson
On April 8, the moon will cast a shadow across much of North America.
By Jonathan Corum
The subtle event, known as a penumbral eclipse, can be observed by everyone on Earth’s nightside.
By Katrina Miller
Victor Glover, a nine-year veteran of the astronaut corps who will fly around the moon in 2025, said the search for excellence and diversity were not mutually exclusive.
By Kenneth Chang and Emma Goldberg
Sweden’s courts have been debating claims to a meteorite that fell north of Stockholm, including whether the right to move around in nature, including on private property, extends to claiming a meteorite.
By Christina Anderson
These are answers to common questions about the April 8 eclipse, and we’re offering you a place to pose more of them.
By Katrina Miller
Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust, discusses his next final frontier.
By Katrina Miller
A number of case studies published after recent total solar eclipses highlight the importance of safe viewing.
By Gina Kolata
The Apollo-Soyuz mission, amid the Cold War, broke new ground in space cooperation when an American capsule docked with a Soviet craft 140 miles above the earth.
By Richard Goldstein
The island democracy urgently needs an internet backup. Mr. Musk’s total control over his Starlink service, which dominates the market, left Taiwan wary.
By Meaghan Tobin and John Liu
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The third test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built achieved a series of milestones before the spacecraft was lost as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.
By Kenneth Chang
The rocket, a version of which will eventually carry NASA astronauts to the moon, traveled almost halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.
By Reuters
Seeing plasma build up beneath a spacecraft in near-real time is uncommon.
By Kenneth Chang and Michael Roston
While SpaceX has a major head start on the way to orbit, Blue Origin has a plan to put an uncrewed spacecraft on the moon in 12-16 months.
By Kenneth Chang
Bigger than the Statue of Liberty, the SpaceX vehicle is central to NASA’s plans to get to the moon and Elon Musk’s dreams of the red planet.
By Kenneth Chang
The Japanese company hoped to become the country’s first private business to put a satellite into orbit. The failed launch was its inaugural flight.
By Hisako Ueno and Yan Zhuang
After making billions in tax-deductible donations to his philanthropy, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX gave away far less than required in some years — and what he did give often supported his own interests.
By David A. Fahrenthold and Ryan Mac
But the new report suggests that the public’s belief that the government is hiding what it knows will probably continue.
By Julian E. Barnes
A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago, and astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show in the coming months.
By Robin George Andrews
In 1983, he commanded a Challenger shuttle flight. After the 1986 disaster, he was charged with leading NASA’s return to space.
By Richard Sandomir
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This documentary by Ido Mizrahy examines the psychological challenges of space exploration for astronauts and their loved ones as scientists consider whether humans could reach Mars.
By Ben Kenigsberg
The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.
By Orlando Mayorquin
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin may find that a nuclear weapon in orbit is less useful for war than intimidation.
By William J. Broad
A new study suggests that the amount of the element on the moon of Jupiter is on the lower end of previous estimates.
By Katrina Miller
Two spacecraft have ended up askew on the lunar surface this year. It is easier to tip over in the weaker gravity on the moon than you may imagine.
By Kenneth Chang
A new satellite will detect emissions of methane, an invisible yet potent gas that is dangerously heating the planet.
By Malika Khurana and Hiroko Tabuchi
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