The building-size asteroid 2024 YR4 has a small chance of striking the moon in 2032 — and a new study predicts it could also put on a spectacular show for skywatchers by creating thousands of impact flashes as well as extreme meteor storms. The space rock — which is about 200 feet (60 meters) wide,
On Tuesday, March 3, our lunar neighbor will turn into a dramatic ‘blood moon’ during the first and only total lunar eclipse of 2026. You won’t want to miss this event as the next total lunar eclipse won’t happen until New Year’s Eve 2028! The blood moon phase of the lunar eclipse will be visible
A bleak photograph shows a mother polar bear and her three cubs resting on bare ground and moss, their coats brown with mud. The image is on the shortlist for this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award — a contest in which members of the public vote for their favorite among
NASA was forced to end a critical fueling test of its giant Artemis 2 rocket early in the wee hours of Tuesday, delaying its mission to launch astronauts around the moon by at least a month. Now that a new day has dawned on the big orange launch vehicle, the space agency is attempting to
A NASA probe has started its mission to map the heliosphere, which is a huge protective bubble around the solar system that was created by the sun, the space agency announced on Monday. The space agency’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, is expected to continue its mission for two years, using scientific instruments
Veteran NASA astronaut Don Pettit returned from his 220-day mission on board the International Space Station in April 2025, the day of his 70th birthday, making him the oldest active astronaut on the space agency’s roster. During his seven-month stint on board the aging orbital outpost, his fourth trip to space, Pettit took the time
I’ve yet to meet a physicist that didn’t believe in the beauty of the general theory of relativity—Einstein’s description of gravity as the curvature of spacetime. After all, it’s consistently reinforced a myriad of breakthroughs, especially in astrophysics. So when some cosmic phenomenon confuses scientists, it feels right for them to count on general relativity
Consciousness has long been one of science’s most stubborn mysteries. We can map the brain in exquisite detail, decode neural circuits, and even build machines that rival human abilities in language and pattern recognition. Yet, the most basic question remains unanswered: how does physical brain activity become subjective experience? A new study published in Frontiers
A newly uncovered Paranthropus jawbone fossil is reshaping how scientists map the early human family. Researchers found the partial lower jaw in Ethiopia’s Afar region and dated it to about 2.6 million years ago. The find pushes the known range of Paranthropus more than 600 miles north, hinting that the genus was far more mobile
SpaceX has temporarily grounded its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which is slated to launch four astronauts just eight days from now. A Falcon 9 delivered 25 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) as planned on Monday (Feb. 2). But, after deploying the payloads, the rocket’s upper stage failed to perform its deorbit