Explorer

Even nearing the end, the Cassini spacecraft is still producing amazing science. This story focuses on Saturn's moon Enceladus; researchers from Cornell University in New York say they have found evidence that the moon has changed its polar axis of spin. This is based on features they've found on the surface of the moon.

A new company called Earth-i has announced it will be launching a constellation of satellites into Earth's orbit that will download "fast-turn-around pictures and colour video of the planet's surface."

A full re-examination of the Kepler Space Telescope's data has revealed an additional 10 new planets that are near-Earth size and in their host-star's habitable zone. Even more interesting, follow-up studies on all of the rocky planets discovered by Kepler (thousands) to-date show that smaller planets come in two sizes. They are either 1.5 Earth Radii and smaller, or 2 Earth Radii and larger. The Kepler Space Telescope held its primary data collection from 2009 to 2013. The total number of

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

The Curiosity rover has been at Gale Crater on Mars since its landing on the red planet in August of 2012, and over the last 5 years has assembled a strong case indicating the conditions on Mars in the distant past were favourable for life. Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York recently took a comprehensive look at Curiosity's findings over the years and has reached a conclusion that within the lake that existed at Gale Crater, there is evidence of stratification. This means that

The Curiosity rover has been on Mars since 2012, and has contributed much to our understanding of the Martian environment in the past and present. In 2016, NASA performed a routine wheel examination to keep track of the wear and tear of the wheels. Cracks and holes are starting to appear in the gaps between the treads. After 5 years into this mission, it's not a surprise the wheels have started to wear, however, NASA wants to squeeze as much time out of them as possible. In March, they uploaded

The Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its first dive between the planet Saturn and its rings, something no other craft had done before. Before attempting the dive, scientists weren't sure exactly how much dust/debris would exist in this gap. As a precaution, the orbital scientists oriented Cassini so that its radio antennae pointed in the direction of its trajectory to help protect some of its more sensitive instruments. While performing the dive, mission scientists performed

NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has begun its final mission phase, making its first dive between the planet Saturn and its rings. It is the only craft to ever make that plunge. Check out some of the amazing images it took as it went through, including the north pole hexagonal vortex.

The NASA/ESA Mission to Saturn, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, snapped this shot of the moon Tethys, a 1000 km wide moon of Saturn. Featured in the lower right is Ithaca Chasm. This canyon is about 100 km wide and 2000 km long; it stretches nearly 75% around the moon itself.

This composite image of Earth and its moon, as seen from Mars, combines the best Earth image with the best moon image from four sets of images acquired on Nov. 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (@HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.