kepler
These Earth-Sized Planets Are Over Twice as Old as Ours
And the fact they exist around such an old star suggests there could be ancient life out there with a few billion years’ headstart on us.
This Is How We'll Find the Next Earth
Hot blobs of gas and rocky super-Earths bring us one step closer to ending our cosmic loneliness.
A Brief, Depressing History of Solar Sails
NASA says it just wasted $21 million on what was to be the largest solar sail ever.
Why NASA Has 13 Spacecraft Watching a Single Comet This Weekend
Comet C/2013 A1, also known as comet Siding Spring, will pass about 87,000 miles from Mars, and a whole fleet of spacecraft and rovers have been lined up to image it.
Astronomers Can Now Detect Water on Exoplanets That Are Light Years Away
HAT P-11b is only four times bigger than Earth, and it’s decked out in water vapor.
Chair Rockets and Demon Ladders: How Our Ancestors Imagined Going to the Moon
Over the centuries and across cultures, numerous ideas about how to get to our satellite have been bandied about, and they truly expose the depth of humanity's harebrained imagination.
A Potentially Habitable 'Godzilla of Earths' Is an Entirely New Class of Planet
Space proves once again that it doesn't care about our scientific theories.
NASA's Plan to Block Light From Distant Stars to Find 'Earth 2.0'
The glare from other stars has made it impossible to image their planets—blocking out the light could make it possible to study them directly.