Full moons are good reason to look up – and the one on Nov. 14 is no exception. But here’s why you likely won’t see something shockingly different from other full moons you’ve observed over the years.
Large asteroid hits on Earth have the potential to wipe out humanity so knowing how to detect and deflect them is vital. But we know very little about the interior make up of many asteroids.
The HI-SEAS mission gives people a chance to practise on Earth what life would be like on Mars. A crew member here from the 2015 mission.
Flickr/University of Hawaii/HI-SEAS
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 will soon get to hear the winds on Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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.
Artist’s impression.
Don Davis (work commissioned by NASA)
A new theory could change our understanding of the moons in our solar system – and the genesis of life itself.
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.
An artist’s illustration of Kappa Ceti whose stellar winds are 50 times stronger than our sun’s. Any Earth-like planet would need a magnetic field to protect its atmosphere if it was to stand a chance of hosting life.
M. Weiss/CfA
In the search for life on other planets in the universe we need to find the right kind of star, and it needs to have the right kind of space weather.
Mercury in exaggerated colour. The dark blue areas are rich in carbon.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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.
Artist’s impression: Looking back 12.9-billion km towards the sun and the inner solar system from Sedna, one of the recently discovered minor planets in the Kuiper belt.
NASA, ESA and Adolf Schaller
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 and 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?
NASA’s Juno probe will be the fastest object humanity has ever created when it approaches Jupiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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.