Two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut said Sunday they are eager to blast off Wednesday on a flight to the International Space Station, replacing four crew members who cut their mission short and returned to Earth last month because of a medical issue. Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, European Space
A NASA rover has used its last drop of a special chemical to analyze a Mars sample that may contain organics, the kinds of molecules life uses on Earth. After the Red Planet reemerged from conjunction — a period when NASA doesn’t communicate with spacecraft because Mars is behind the sun from Earth’s point of
Eyeem Mobile Gmbh/Getty Images NASA has been working toward one of its most exciting and ambitious Mars missions – its goal of putting humans on the Red Planet – for years now. The space agency says that its path for humanity’s exploration of the Red Planet began on the
SpaceX successfully sent another batch of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on Saturday (Feb. 7), just five days after standing down in the wake of an anomaly during its prior launch. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the 25 Starlink satellites lifted off at 3:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT or 12:58 p.m. PDT local time)
The internet is alive with UFO reports at the moment, the excitement sparked by a comet identified as 3I/ATLAS. Comets are not uncommon visitors to our solar system, but this is a rare type. Its speed, its path and its composition identify it as an object that is not circling within our solar system, but
The nine Merlin 1D engines at the base of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket briefly ignited during a static fire test of the vehicle on Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. This test was a precursor to the launch of Crew-12 to the International Space Station. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now An early morning rocket engine test at Cape
Beneath Earth’s surface lies a kingdom of undiscovered microscopic life. These “intraterrestrials” survive in some of the harshest conditions on the planet — and scientists are hunting for these microbes. In this excerpt from “Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth” (Princeton University Press, 2025), author Karen G. Lloyd, a microbial biogeochemist at the University
Venus has long been known as Earth’s evil twin. While they both are roughly the same size and formed in the same inner region of the solar system, Venus is far less hospitable to life as we know it. Its surface temperatures can reach over 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Its clouds are made of sulfuric acid,
An underwater robot has uncovered a long-lost wreckage of a Second World War bomber on the seabed near Malta. The remains, identified as a Fairey Swordfish, were found during an autonomous exploration of the ocean floor, adding a significant historical find to the growing body of World War II wreck discoveries. The robot’s discovery, which
A jawbone retrieved from the bottom of the Taiwan Strait has been confirmed as belonging to a Denisovan, one of humanity’s most mysterious relatives. The fossil, discovered at depths of 60 to 120 meters, is the latest piece of evidence that Denisovans, once thought to inhabit only colder, mountainous regions, also lived in the warmer