Science

Summer nights are the shortest but also the warmest — making them particularly appealing for skywatching. The upcoming months feature the year’s best meteor shower in August, the return of multiple planets and a partial lunar eclipse before the season ends.Here are five things to watch for as you’re out and about in the balmy summer nights ahead…

The piece of debris that fell through Alejandro Otero's roof (right) came from a support bracket jettisoned from the International Space Station. The owner of a home in southwestern Florida has formally submitted a claim to NASA for damages caused by a chunk of space…

Enlarge / A Sixgill Hagfish (Eptatretus hexatrema) in False Bay, South Africa. The humble hagfish is an ugly, gray, eel-like creature best known for its ability to unleash a cloud of sticky slime onto unsuspecting predators, clogging the gills and suffocating said…

The face of our oldest human ancestor has been recreated (Picture: Cicero Moraes/Pen News)If you’ve ever wondered what your ancestors looked like 300,000 years ago, look no further.The face of the oldest known human has been reconstructed for the first time, revealing a man described as ‘strong and serene’. It was created by Brazilian…

NASA will talk about the delayed return to Earth of Boeing's Starliner capsule during a press conference today (June 18), and you can listen to it live.NASA and Boeing representatives will discuss the progress of Starliner's mission at the International Space Station (ISS), which docked June 6 after experiencing several helium leaks and issues…

The name “Strawberry Moon” isn’t from the color of the Moon, despite what you see in this artist’s illustration. It comes from the Algonquin tribes of North America, marking the time of year when wild strawberries are typically harvested.The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon; the Flower, Hot, Hoe, or Planting Moon; the Mead or Honey Moon;…

NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook An illustration depicts colliding asteroids around the central star in the Beta Pictoris system and terrestrial planets forming. The insets show what two of the system's…

Long ago, a vigorous river filled an expansive Martian lake. Now, a NASA robot has rumbled through this ghost of Mars' water-rich past.In early June, the space agency's Perseverance rover drove across the Neretva Vallis river channel, now a wide, dried-up waterway. The Mars robot, en route to examine new areas of interest, looked up the channel…

SpaceX officials hope to soon launch and land massive 492-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy rockets up to 44 times per year at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.But 40-year Titusville resident Susan Palma fears more development at the Cape will risk further disrupting the imperiled Indian River Lagoon's natural water flow and salinity. She attended a…

Space changes you, even during short trips off the planet.Four people who spent three days off Earth in September 2021 experienced physical and mental changes that included modest declines in cognitive tests, stressed immune systems and genetic changes within their cells, scientists report in a package of papers published on Tuesday in the…