Noguchi calls for plan to track, destroy asteroids on collision course with Earth
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi joins some of his predecessors to ask world governments to protect humanity from asteroids on a collision course with Earth.
Space is getting awfully messy. The amount of debris in Earth's orbit keeps multiplying each year, damaging satellites and putting astronauts in harm's way. If the problem gets severe enough, it could eventually make low-Earth orbit unusable. Scientists have known about the space trash problem ...
Scientists have discovered the most distant galaxy ever confirmed, whose light took more than 13 billion years to reach Earth, providing a snapshot of the early universe. The faraway system resides in the night sky just above the handle of the Big Dipper. One curious ...
Earth's slowdown messing with human tech
Don't forget to set your clocks ahead two thousandths of a second before you go to sleep tonight. Same thing goes for bedtime tomorrow. And every day after that, because that is how much slower the Earth turns on its axis each day now ...
Search for Mars life to continue despite rover's findings
Martian life is awfully cryptic — that is a scientific term; it means life that is out of sight, below the surface, burrowed into ecological niches not easily scrutinized by robotic sentinels from the planet Earth.
Long ago, in a dreamier era, space stations were imagined as portals to the heavens. In the 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the huge structure twirled in orbit, aesthetically sublime, a relaxing way station for astronauts heading to the moon. It featured a ...
Giant camera hunts for dark energy
With the whir of a giant digital camera, the biggest mystery in the universe is about to become a bit less mysterious. Fifteen years ago, the world of science was rocked by the discovery that, contrary to our previous notions of gravity gradually slowing the ...
Voyager I craft becomes first man-made object to enter interstellar space
The tireless Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in the disco era and now about 19 billion km from Earth, has become the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, scientists said Thursday. Interstellar space, scientists now know with certainty, is dense with ...
JAXA space cargo transporter re-enters atmosphere after ending ISS mission
An unmanned space cargo transporter operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency re-entered Earth's atmosphere around 3:30 p.m. Saturday and burned up over the Pacific, after completing its mission. The Konotori No. 4 was equipped with a so-called i-Ball device to videotape its re-entry into ...
Paris AFP-JIJI A large asteroid has been named after Alejandro Jodorowsky, the cult Franco-Chilean filmmaker and science-fiction comic book writer who later became a spiritual guru. The Minor Planets Center, a branch of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), has listed asteroid 261690 Jodorowsky at the request ...
NASA's mission improbable: corral an asteroid
NASA is looking for a rock. It has to be out there somewhere — a small asteroid circling the sun and passing close to Earth. It can't be too big or too small. Something 6 to 9 meters in diameter would work. It can't ...
