Firefly Aerospace's robotic Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to land on the moon on Sunday no earlier than 3:34 a.m. EST (0834 GMT) when it touches down on the vast Sea of Crises (or Mare Crisium). Watch it live here: https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/firefly-blue-ghost-mission-1-lunar-landing/ The $93.3 million Blue... Continue Reading →
Today, Mars is a chilly desert of rock and dust — but 4 billion years ago, the planet had rivers, lakes and even oceans with sandy beaches. Data from China's Zhurong rover recently revealed the first evidence of one of... Continue Reading →
Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern... Continue Reading →
Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions. This happened just yesterday, though, as seen from some locations in North America and western Africa. This occultation was notable not only... Continue Reading →
On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, successfully completing the final ‘gravity assist manoeuvre’ needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few... Continue Reading →
Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris, but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction -- making it the North Star. Since... Continue Reading →
Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be one of the more remarkable comet sights of recent years, reflecting about as much sunlight to Earth... Continue Reading →
The colorful, spiky stars are in the foreground of this image taken with a small telescope on planet Earth. They lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies in the frame lie far beyond the Milky Way,... Continue Reading →
What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium, it heats up so much it glows. Two different supernova remnants (SNRs) are visible in the featured image,... Continue Reading →
Scents of Science 