NASA's LRO spots Japan's SLIM moon lander

On Jan. 19, 2024, at 10:20 a.m. EST, the JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on the lunar surface. Five days later, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft ...

Rocky planets might need to be the right age to support life

Extrasolar planets are being discovered at a rapid rate—4,531 planets in 3,363 systems (with another 7,798 candidates awaiting confirmation). Of these, 166 have been identified as rocky planets (also known as "Earth-like"), ...

Inside the Irish lough that offers a window into the deep sea

Deeper than most scuba divers can safely work and above where most underwater robots are designed to descend lie some of the most poorly studied ecosystems in the world. Between 30 and 150 meters down is the ocean's mesophotic ...

Capsule with asteroid samples arrives in Japan for research

Japanese space agency officials were delighted Tuesday by the return of a small capsule containing asteroid soil samples obtained by their Hayabusa2 spacecraft and were anxiously waiting to look inside after preparations ...

EXPLAINER: What has Japanese space mission accomplished?

A small capsule containing asteroid soil samples that was dropped from 136,700 miles (220,000 kilometers) in space by Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft landed as planned in the Australian Outback on Sunday. After a preliminary ...

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