World Apr 21, 2023
SpaceX’s Starship ‘learning experience’ ends in explosion
The rocket, the most powerful ever built, did not reach orbit but provided important lessons for the private spaceflight company.
World / Science & Health Dec 14, 2022
Scientists achieve nuclear fusion breakthrough with blast of 192 lasers
If fusion can be deployed on a large scale, it would offer an energy source devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
World Dec 13, 2022
Major fusion energy breakthrough to be announced by scientists
The development could set the stage for future progress that could one day lead to the use of laser fusion as a source of carbon-free energy.
Asia Pacific / Science & Health Aug 6, 2022
South Korea is scouting out the moon, with more missions to come
South Korea’s lunar spacecraft, named Danuri, was launched from Florida on Thursday, setting out on a roundabout but fuel-efficient path that will have it arriving at the moon in mid-December.
World Aug 12, 2021
NASA says an asteroid will have a close brush with Earth. But not until the 2100s.
The trajectory of Bennu is known precisely enough that the chances of collision are exactly zero for the next century. But the crystal ball becomes fuzzier in 2135.
World / Science & Health Jun 3, 2021
New NASA missions will study Venus, a world overlooked for decades
After numerous missions by the United States and the Soviet Union to explore it in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, attention shifted elsewhere.
Asia Pacific May 8, 2021
Heads up! A used Chinese rocket is tumbling back to Earth this weekend.
The chances of it hitting a populated area are small, but not zero. That has raised questions about how the country’s space program designs its missions.
World / Science & Health Apr 20, 2021
NASA’s Mars helicopter completes first flight on another world
Like the first flight of an airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright, the flight did not go far or last long, but it showed what could be done.
World / Science & Health Oct 27, 2020
There’s water ice on the moon, and in more places than NASA once thought
An infrared telescope mounted inside a 747 jumbo jet showed unambiguous evidence of water on parts of the moon where the sun shines.
World / Science & Health Sep 15, 2020
Life on Venus? Astronomers see a signal in its clouds
Scientists detected a chemical — phosphine — in the thick Venus atmosphere, and they assert that something now alive is the only explanation for its source.