Uranus' Moon Miranda
24.12.1995

NASA's robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed the planet Uranus and its moons in 1986. While the cloud tops of Uranus proved to be rather featureless, the surface of Miranda, the innermost of Uranus' large moons, showed several interesting features.

The Galaxy and the Quasar
7.10.2002

Is the galaxy in the center connected to the quasar on the upper right? Disagreements about systems like this have raged for decades and have been used to challenge the foundations of modern cosmology.

Saturns Rings in Natural Color
23.07.2004

What colors are Saturn's rings? Recent images from the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn confirm that different rings have slightly different colors. The above image shows their sometimes-subtle differences in brightness and color. The rings reflect sunlight and so, even if they were perfectly reflecting, would appear the color of the Sun.

Uranus Moon 18
31.05.1999

The discovery was there for the taking. An image of Uranus taken by Voyager 2 as it passed the giant planet 13 years ago apparently recorded a moon that had since gone unnoticed. The image on which Uranus' 18th moon was discovered was freely available from NASA. Erich Karkoschka (U.

A Last Landing for Space Shuttle Endeavour
7.06.2011

Space shuttle Endeavour is home to stay. In a rare night landing last week, Endeavour glided onto a runway in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA completing a 16-day mission that included a visit to the International Space Station (ISS).

Approaching Pluto
27.05.2015

Here comes Pluto. NASA's robotic New Horizons spacecraft is now beyond the orbit of Neptune and closing fast on the Solar System's most famous unexplored world. The featured time lapse video shows...

A World Explorer
25.08.1995

Ferdinand Magellan was a world explorer. Many consider him the greatest navigator of Europe's 16th century age of sea going exploration and credit his expedition with the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. NASA...

The Flight of Helios
20.12.2003

An example of solar-powered flight, NASA's Helios aircraft flew almost one hundred years after the Wright brothers' historic flight on December 17, 1903. Pictured here at 10,000 feet in in skies northwest of Kauai, Hawaii in August 2001, the remotely piloted Helios is traveling at about 25 miles per hour.

Landing on Mars: Seven Minutes of Terror
15.02.2021

Starting Thursday, there may be an amazing new robotic explorer on Mars. Or there may be a new pile of junk. It all likely depends on things going correctly in the minutes after the Mars 2020 mission arrives at its new home planet and attempts to deploy the Perseverance rover.

Marius Hills: Holes in the Moon
25.10.2017

Could humans live beneath the surface of the Moon? This intriguing possibility was bolstered in 2009 when Japan's Moon-orbiting SELENE spacecraft imaged a curious hole beneath the Marius Hills region on the Moon, possibly a skylight to an underground lava tube.