Maricela Lizcano poses inside NASA Glenn Research Center’s Aerospace Communications Facility. via NASA

History’s second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke’s orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3 years, Encke has the shortest […]

NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems conducts a water flow test with the mobile launcher at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B in Florida on Oct. 24, 2023. It is the third in a series of tests to verify the overpressure protection and sound suppression system is ready for launch of the Artemis II mission. During liftoff, […]

History’s first known periodic comet, Comet Halley (1P/Halley), returns to the inner Solar System every 76 years or so. The famous comet made its last appearance to the naked-eye in 1986. But dusty debris from Comet Halley can be seen raining through planet Earth’s skies twice a year during two annual meteor showers, the Eta […]

An engineer prepares a small rover – part of NASA’s CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration that’s headed to the Moon – for testing in a thermal vacuum chamber at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in October 2023. via NASA

In 60 seconds, this setting Sun will turn green. Actually, the top of the Sun already appears not only green, but wavey — along with all of its edges. The Sun itself is unchanged — both effects are caused by looking along hot and cold layers in Earth’s atmosphere. The unusual color is known as […]

A storm is pictured in the Arabian Sea less than 700 miles off the coast of Oman as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above. via NASA

This dance is to the death. As these two large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over 75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. As […]

More than 37,000 people registered to attend the NASA Langley open house. Nils Larson, X59 pilot and Astronaut Victor Glover reunited at Langley’s hangar and hosted by Center Director Clayton Turner. via NASA

There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth’s moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io’s interior gets heated and its surface has become […]