Science

A cataclysmic volcanic eruption is one of the most violent and disruptive things our planet can do. Vast clouds of ash and gas burst into the atmosphere, while blisteringly hot molten rock surges upward and rolls across the surface, destroying anything in its path. But volcanoes can be a force for good, too. Their eruptions

TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX has the FCC’s blessing to buy EchoStar spectrum to improve direct-to-device (D2D) services in the United States, subject to a $2.4 billion escrow tied to disputes over the seller’s abandoned terrestrial 5G network buildout. The regulator said May 12 it would allow the geostationary satellite operator to sell around 115 megahertz

We have been on a years-long campaign of satellite remote sensing of the vast desert landscapes in Eastern Sudan. This involved using satellite aerial imagery to systematically and painstakingly search for archaeological features in Atbai Desert of Eastern Sudan, a small part of the much larger Sahara. Our team – which includes archaeologists from Macquarie

The Moon is constantly accosted by impacts from the Universe at large. Later this year, our closest neighbor in space is predicted to be hit at seven times the speed of sound by an earthly projectile roughly the height of a five-story building: the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. According to an analysis

WASHINGTON — NASA plans to continue exchanging International Space Station crews about every six months after considering longer stays. NASA announced May 1 that the next commercial crew mission to the ISS, SpaceX’s Crew-13, will launch in mid-September rather than November. A Crew Dragon spacecraft will bring to the station NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and

Ever since JWST first began peering out at the early Universe a few years ago, astronomers have been spotting strange “little red dots” (LRDs) in its infrared images. There are hundreds of these compact blobs at very high redshifts at distances of about 12 billion light-years. Astronomers think they began forming some 600 million years

Cities and towns are usually 1–3°C hotter than the surrounding countryside, because asphalt, concrete and brick absorb heat from the sun and radiate it slowly. Some cities can be as much as 7°C hotter. This effect is known as the urban heat island. This can be dangerous, especially in hot countries. In very hot conditions,

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have finalized an agreement to collaborate on a mission to study the asteroid Apophis during its close flyby of Earth in 2029. In a May 7 ceremony in Berlin, the heads of ESA and JAXA signed a cooperation agreement for the Rapid Apophis Mission

Many of us owe our moms our very survival into adulthood. It’s a harrowing job, making sure children don’t find their way into sticky situations. But the protective umbrella of a mother’s love may extend far, far beyond just the individual. The exceptional longevity of the entire human race may be partly explained by the

WASHINGTON — MDA Space is continuing work on a robotic arm for the lunar Gateway while it discusses the future of the project with the Canadian Space Agency. In a May 7 earnings call to discuss the company’s first-quarter financial results, MDA executives said they are pressing ahead with Canadarm3 despite NASA’s announcement in March

The motion of galaxy clusters in the distant Universe has just yielded the largest-scale test yet of the laws of gravity. Across scales that span hundreds of millions of light-years, gravity continues to behave the way Isaac Newton predicted in his universal law of gravitation. According to this law, every particle in the Universe exerts

WASHINGTON — A spacecraft designed to raise the decaying orbit of a NASA astrophysics satellite has passed environmental tests ahead of a launch as soon as June. NASA and spacecraft manufacturer Katalyst Space said May 8 that Katalyst’s Link spacecraft successfully completed a series of environmental tests at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. That work

WASHINGTON — Paraguay signed the Artemis Accords May 7, the sixth country to do so in the last two and a half weeks. Osvaldo Almirón Riveros, head of the Paraguayan Space Agency, signed the Accords in a ceremony in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, attended by a U.S. Embassy official and a representative of the

The Curiosity rover has revealed many surprises on the surface of Mars, but its most recent one is of a totally different kind. It started like any other drilling attempt. On 25 April 2026, the rover plunged its rotary-percussive drill into a rock named Atacama, hoping to pulverize the material into powder that can then

In recent days, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote an op-ed suggesting AI chatbot Claude may be conscious. Dawkins did not express certainty that Claude is conscious. But he pointed out that Claude’s sophisticated abilities are difficult to make sense of without ascribing some kind of inner experience to the machine. The illusion of consciousness –

WASHINGTON — Redwire is taking a renewed interest in lunar landers given the demand signal from NASA to support the agency’s ambitions to develop a moon base. In a May 7 earnings call, Redwire executives said the company saw opportunities to provide both lunar landers and power systems as part of the lunar base NASA

A half century after NASA’s Apollo 17 lunar module lifted off the Moon‘s northeastern near side quadrant, planetary scientists still don’t completely understand when or how our Moon first formed. They do agree that it involved a major impactor – an object dubbed Theia by lunar scientists – that likely struck our Earth some 4.51

DENVER – The job of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) is to “deliver disruptive capabilities to our warfighters faster than emerging threats,” NGA Director Lt. Gen. Michele Bredenkamp said May 6 in 2026 GEOINT Symposium keynote. Achieving that goal will require the new office to “take a lot of risk in acquisition,”

More than 40,000 years ago, the European continent was home to two human lineages: our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens, and our cousins, the Neanderthals. There was to be only one sole survivor. For more than a century, scientists have tried to figure out why. Why did our own branch of humanity flourish, while another was

In the wild unknown, out beyond the orbit of Neptune, astronomers have found a tiny world that defies our understanding of skies. This baffling object measures around 500 kilometers (310 miles) across, too small for its weak gravity to retain an atmosphere for long – yet an atmosphere it has. It’s thin and tenuous, to

WASHINGTON — Voyager Technologies says it is ready should NASA change plans for supporting development of commercial space stations. In March, NASA outlined a proposed new direction for its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations, or CLD, program. The agency, outlining its concerns that a commercial market for space stations had not emerged, said it was

A pioneering project has revealed the human body like never before, from entire organs down to cellular structures, with unprecedented precision on the scale of a single micron – about 50 times thinner than a strand of human hair. Our bodies are akin to biological nesting dolls, formed from a hierarchical assembly of cells, tissues,

As the Northern Hemisphere progresses through the balmy days of Spring, it’s a perfect time to get outside and enjoy one of the best meteor showers our sky has to offer. Our planet is currently passing through debris left by the passage of Halley’s Comet around the Sun, an annual event known as the Eta

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico City is sinking by nearly 10 inches (about 25 centimeters) a year, according to new satellite imagery released this week by NASA, making it one of the world’s fastest-subsiding metropolises. One of the world’s most sprawling and populated urban areas, at 3,000 square miles (about 7,800 square kilometers) and some

DENVER — A group of defense and technology firms is assembling a joint effort aimed at solving a persistent problem for military users: how to access and use commercial satellite imagery and other geospatial intelligence when communications networks are unreliable or unavailable. The initiative, called Coalition Edge, brings together companies focused on analytics, cloud infrastructure

Here’s something archaeologists don’t see every day, or indeed ever: An ancient Egyptian mummy with an excerpt from the classic Greek text the Iliad plastered to its abdomen. That’s a sentence that takes quite a lot of unpacking, so we’ll start with the mummy. In this first-of-its-kind discovery, the 1,600-year-old remains were found in Al

WASHINGTON — More than two months after NASA announced revised plans for the Artemis 3 mission, the agency has provided few details about the mission itself amid signs its schedule may be slipping. NASA announced Feb. 27 it was revising its plans for future Artemis missions, with Artemis 3 — originally planned to be the

AP – J. Craig Venter, who mapped the first draft of the human genome and helped scientists understand how genes shape our lives, died Wednesday. He was 79. Venter’s death was announced by the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genomics research group with locations in La Jolla, California, and Rockville, Maryland. In the 1990s, Venter

WASHINGTON — NASA is planning to increase the total value of a contract for robotic lunar lander missions to support a proposed surge in flights for the agency’s moon base plans. In an April 27 procurement filing, NASA said it was planning to increase the maximum value of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract

It’s entirely normal and healthy to be a little self-involved from time to time. But for some individuals, a preoccupation with the self can become excessive, impacting daily life and relationships in pathological ways. Narcissistic personality disorders are rare, yet their traits have long fascinated scientists. Despite decades of research, it remains unclear what causes