Astronomy

96 articles with this tag

How NASA's Artemis Program Works—Moon and Beyond Science

How NASA's Artemis Program Works—Moon and Beyond

NASA's Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon and eventually reach Mars. Here's how SLS, Orion, and commercial landers work together to mak...

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How Rovers Detect Organic Molecules on Mars Science

How Rovers Detect Organic Molecules on Mars

Mars rovers use miniature chemistry labs to heat, dissolve, and analyze Martian rocks, searching for the carbon-based molecules that could hint at anc...

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How Tidally Locked Planets Work—Eternal Day Meets Night Science

How Tidally Locked Planets Work—Eternal Day Meets Night

Tidally locked planets keep one face permanently turned toward their star, creating a world split between scorching daylight and frozen darkness. Scie...

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How Meteor Showers Work—Cosmic Debris at 70 km/s Science

How Meteor Showers Work—Cosmic Debris at 70 km/s

Meteor showers occur when Earth plows through trails of dust and rock left behind by comets. Here's the science behind these annual celestial displays...

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What Is Dark Energy—and Why It Rules the Universe Science

What Is Dark Energy—and Why It Rules the Universe

Dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the universe and drives its accelerating expansion, yet scientists still don't know what it is. Here's how the hun...

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How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds Science

How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds

The radial velocity method—also called the wobble method—finds exoplanets by measuring tiny Doppler shifts in starlight caused by a planet's gravitati...

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How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter Science

How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter

Black holes shoot twin beams of plasma at nearly the speed of light across millions of light-years. Here's how accretion disks and magnetic fields pow...

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What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life Science

What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life

The habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Understanding how scientists...

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How NASA's Deep Space Network Talks to Spacecraft Science

How NASA's Deep Space Network Talks to Spacecraft

NASA's Deep Space Network is a trio of giant antenna complexes that keep Earth connected to every interplanetary mission, from Mars rovers to Voyager...

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How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth Science

How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth

Inside the world's most powerful rare-isotope accelerator, physicists smash atomic nuclei at half the speed of light to understand how stars forge the...

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How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun Science

How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators convert the heat of decaying plutonium-238 into electricity, enabling spacecraft like Voyager 1 to operate for...

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Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows Science

Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows

Scientists have debated whether Mars once held a vast northern ocean for nearly four decades. New geological evidence, including a continental shelf '...

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