New Horizons continues to help unravel the icy dwarf planet’s secrets.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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.
The only way to fly the friendly skies – or dark voids of space.
Tom Simpson/Flickr
We’re on the cusp of being able to consistently launch and land rockets, greatly reducing the cost of space travel. But how long before there’s a Millennium Falcon in every garage?
After a 24-hour delay due to bad weather, the first test launch of the Orion spacecraft by NASA is underway with the ultimate goal of putting human beings on Mars. Weeks after the landing on a comet by…
For decades, space exploration remained a domain within reach of only government agencies, who could command huge pools of expertise and public funds. Now the means by which our space endeavours are funded…
Visualisation of Venus Express during the aerobraking manoeuvre into the atmosphere of Venus.
ESA–C. Carreau
The Venus Express spacecraft has spent eight productive years orbiting the planet Venus and is now ready to take the plunge. Its orbit is slowly being lowered and from Wednesday it will repeatedly dive…
Can we go too far humanising machines?
Flickr/Jeremy Brooks
This weekend, the moon’s fortnightly rotation cycle turns China’s lunar rover Yutu (the Jade Rabbit) and its solar panels toward the sun once again … but whether the rover wakes up or not remains to be…
The Rosetta spacecraft is due to wake up on the morning of January 20 after a 30-month hibernation in deep space. For the past ten years, the 3-tonne spacecraft has been on a one-way trip to a 4km-wide…