21–40 of 50 results

Solar System

Asteroid Scheme Still Under Way

Despite funding pushback in the House of Representatives, NASA is full steam ahead in plans for its asteroid retrieval mission.

Space Missions

Radiation Risks for Future Marsonauts

Thanks to a detector carried across interplanetary space aboard NASA's Curiosity rover, researchers now have a much clearer idea of radiation exposure that future astronauts will endure when traveling to and from Mars.

Professional Telescopes

Sequestration's Impact on Astronomy

From international travel to interplanetary probes, the U.S. budget cuts are having impacts on both ground- and space-based astronomy.

Solar System

NASA to Snag a Near-Earth Asteroid

Not content to let private companies have all the fun in asteroid exploration and exploitation, NASA managers have proposed a high-flying mission that would capture a small asteroid and dispatch astronauts to study it — all within the next decade.

FireFly approaches asteroid

Science and Space Policy

Asteroid Mining Gets Competitive

Deep Space Industries, Inc, announced plans to send a fleet of asteroid-prospecting to target asteroids in 2015 — and that’s just the first step in their ambitious proposal.

Science and Space Policy

World-Class Telescope For Sale

The impending closure of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope might be averted if the observatory’s director can find a buyer.

Science and Space Policy

Help Uwingu Make a Difference in Space

Uwingu, a small start-up company, wants to change the way science educators, astronomers, and space researchers do business.

Space Missions

Charting a Course for Heliophysics

A new report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences examines how studies of the Sun and its influence on Earth have advanced in the past decade and makes recommendations for what should be tackled next.

Science and Space Policy

Running Around China and the IAU

Pluto, quasars, and total solar eclipses over Easter Island were just a few of the topics that came up at the close of the first week of the international astronomy conference in Beijing.

Science and Space Policy

A Changing Landscape for U.S. Astronomy

The budgetary writing is on the wall: the National Science Foundation doesn't have enough money both to operate all of its existing facilities and to build big, expensive new ones. Something's got to give.

Sentinel spacecraft in orbit

Space Missions

B612 Debuts Its Asteroid-Seeking Sentinel

Astronomers warn that it's not a question of "if" Earth will be hit by an asteroid, but "when." If a private group of space veterans has its way, a Sun-orbiting spacecraft will find threatening objects decades before they can strike us.

Space Missions

Asteroid Mining for Fun and Profit

A cadre of space entrepreneurs has hatched a plan to identify thousands of small near-Earth asteroids — and then to exploit the mineral wealth that many of these space rocks are certain to contain.

Science and Space Policy

If An Impact Looms, Then What?

A group of scientists, policy-makers, and science journalists recently tackled the tough who-where-how-and-why questions that will have to be answered if astronomers discover an asteroid or comet on a collision course with Earth.

Professional Telescopes

Webb Telescope: Progress and Problems

Despite threats by the House of Representatives to cut funding, the James Webb Space Telescope plans move ahead.

Science and Space Policy

Will the Webb Telescope Be Canceled?

NASA's next-generation space observatory is already woefully over budget and behind schedule. But if Congressional money-minders have their way, the project will be killed outright in the months ahead.

MMT Observatory

Professional Telescopes

Praising Arizona — II

S&T contributing editor Govert Schilling visits observatories in southern Arizona.

Solar System

Praising Arizona — I

S&T contributing editor Govert Schilling visits observatories in southern Arizona

Professional Telescopes

Astro2010: U.S. Astronomy's Crystal Ball

If you had $12 billion to spend on ground- and space-based observatories over the next 10 years, how would decide what to build? A 255-page National Research Council study, just released, provides some answers.

Science and Space Policy

NASA's Administrator Visits Boston

Charles Bolden, who took the reins of NASA last July, made an appearance in Boston last week and offered some views about the space agency's future.

Science and Space Policy

New Plan for NASA

The Obama administration abandons NASA's Constellation Moon program, but sets its sights farther afield.