What’s the best way to find out how people will cope with the journey to Mars and life on another planet? Lock a test crew up for a year in a simulation right here on Earth.
We take our understanding of the solar system for granted, but it took centuries to figure out. The original writings of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo and others show how they sparked a revolution.
After last summer’s Pluto flyby, the New Horizons spacecraft started sending data back to Earth – at 2 kilobits per second. Here’s some of what scientists have learned so far from that rich, slow cache.
No one nation should be allowed to go it alone and develop a mining industry in space. It needs an international effort and Australia, with a long history in mining, can play its part.
The search for new objects, including new planets, in our solar system has turned up some interesting finds. There have been a few failures over the years too.
Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute et Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland
Scientists say they have evidence that the solar system has an extra planet, bigger than Earth and way beyond Pluto. So how come we never knew this before?
From the high-speed journey to Jupiter to solar eclipses, meteor showers and planetary alignments visible in the skies above – add these space highlights to your 2016 calendar.
Dawn’s mission director and chief engineer describes his ‘dream come true’ job – and how the new data coming back from Ceres could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of our solar system.
Jupiter had a big influence on how our solar system’s planets formed. New research – led by a high school student – tried to nail down how rare Jupiter analogs really are in other planetary systems.