Category Astronomy/Space

You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’re told the Odyssey spacecraft designed to take you there will be the smoothest ride you’ll ever take. It features a newly christened electric propulsion engine which was in the late stages of testing during the first three missions. The mission starts and the spacecraft travels at a crawl, and you wonder if it’s broken. A week goes by and you’re now traveling at more than 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) per hour, and your mind is blown as to how fast you’re going, how quickly that happened, and that this mission might be more awesome than you thought.

This scenario is quite possibly a decade away, at minimum, but that’s not stopping the bright minds at NASA from building and testing next-generation propulsion systems designed ...

You’re in the lab analyzing Martian regolith samples within your cozy Mars habitat serving on the fifth human mission to Mars. The power within the habitat has been flowing flawlessly thanks to the MARS-MES (Mars Atmospheric Resource & Multimodal Energy System), including the general habitat lighting, science lab, sleeping quarters, exercise equipment, the virtual reality headsets the crew use for rest & relaxation, oxygen and fuel generation, and water. All this from converting the Martian atmosphere into workable electricity.

While this scenario might be decades away, scientists on Earth are working hard to make this concept a reality today...

NASA’s Curiosity rover has identified a wide range of organic molecules on Mars, including compounds that scientists consider key ingredients for the origin of life on Earth.

The discovery comes from a chemical experiment carried out on another planet for the first time. Results show that the Martian surface is capable of preserving molecules that could act as potential signs of ancient life...

From birth to death, stars generally slow by 100 to 1,000 times their initial rotation rates; in other words, they “spin down.” The sun’s total angular momentum has declined as material is gradually blown off at the surface as solar wind. By observing this, astronomers have theorized the interaction between magneticfields and plasma flow to be the most efficient way to spin down stars.

Why and how this happens has long int...