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Landing on Mars is hard
Mars' atmospheric pressure is less than 1% that of Earth, so spacecraft come down hard. Europe has been trying for a Mars' soft landing since 2003. How they plan to succeed.
December 6, 2016
Star clusters seen spewing out dust
UCLA astronomers confirm that stars are responsible for producing dust on a galactic scale, a finding that's consistent with long-standing theories.
December 5, 2016
Astronomers see giant galaxy being born
The Spiderweb Galaxy - which spans some 3 times the diameter of our Milky Way - is forming inside a cluster of protogalaxies, in a dense soup of molecular gas.
December 4, 2016
Mystery of sun’s coronal heating
Exploding "heat bombs" might explain why the sun's upper atmosphere, or corona, sizzles at millions of degrees - hundreds of times hotter than at the surface.
December 2, 2016
It’s a bird, a plane, the tiniest asteroid!
Asteroid 2015 TC25 is small enough to be straddled by a person, reminiscent of the iconic bomb-riding scene in the movie Dr. Strangelove. It swept between us and the moon a year ago.
December 2, 2016
First images from ExoMars mission
A camera on board ESA's ExoMars mission has returned its first images from orbit. It was meant to be a test, but the images are spectacular.
November 29, 2016
Supernovas and ultra-diffuse galaxies
These strange galaxies have 1,000 times fewer stars than the Milky Way, yet occupy a large space. Astronomers used an advanced computer simulation to show that supernova explosions helped create them.
November 29, 2016
IAU approves 227 star names
The International Astronomical Union - which has given itself responsibility to name and define things in space - has now joined the rest of us in recognizing traditional star names.
November 28, 2016
How long to orbit Milky Way’s center?
One journey of our sun and planets around the center of our Milky Way galaxy is sometimes called a cosmic year. That's approximately 225-250 million Earth-years.
November 28, 2016
Vast underground water ice on Mars
Water ice can't persist on Mars surface in the region of Utopia Planitia, about halfway from Mars' equator to its pole. But researchers say there's water in a vast frozen lake underground.
November 26, 2016
