Europa, a frozen moon around Jupiter, is believed to be one of the most habitable worlds in the solar system. It was first imaged in detail by the Voyager 1 probe in…
Author: sysop
Why Pluto may have a large ocean beneath its icy surface
It may have been more than a year since NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft whizzed past Pluto, but the data it captured is still helping space scientists make important new discoveries about the…
Space submarines will allow us to explore the seas of icy moons
One of the most profound and exciting breakthroughs in planetary science in the last two decades has been the discovery of liquid methane lakes on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan,…
Five human spaceflight missions to look forward to in the next decade
From astronauts breaking records for the longest amount of time spent in space to experiments growing food and keeping bacteria in orbit, the past decade of human spaceflight has been fascinating. There…
The Martian: a perfect balance of scientific accuracy and gripping fiction
“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this,” says astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, after being stranded on Mars. That pretty much sums up the tone in…
Record-breaking astronauts return to Earth – taking us one step closer to Mars
Expedition 44 to the International Space Station has been successfully completed after three astronauts landed in Kazakhstan. The mission saw a cosmonaut clock up more days in space than any other human…
After Pluto there’s still plenty of the solar system left to explore
The past couple of years have been very exciting for space exploration. We’ve watched as spacecraft made visits to Mars, comet 67P and, just last week, Pluto, which for decades marked the…
New Horizons is an old spacecraft – but it will transform our knowledge of Pluto
After travelling for nearly 10 years, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is finally set to fly past Pluto in humankind’s first close encounter with the dwarf planet. But the spacecraft is at least…
