From the dawn of the space race to an era of international cooperation, the exploration of outer space has pushed both the limits of human imagination and humankind's technological capability. Explore the rich history of space exploration below, along with where we may go in the future.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
Simulate a visit to the red planet with the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. This 3D interactive experience lets you explore various locations on the martian surface. See closeup images the rover has taken and view key points of interest. It's the next best thing to being there and certainly far safer!
NASA's Artemis mission—the first to return humans since 1972—aims to explore the moon's water-rich south pole. Finding water is a crucial goal of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable human habitat on the moon. NASA also hopes to create a refueling station by using water as a rocket propellant as well as nuclear reactors and solar farms to sustain astronauts. Obviously, significant challenges remain. This article captures the current status of plans to build a lunar base.
The "jewel" of our solar system didn't always have its striking rings. Millions of years ago, a likely icy moon orbited Saturn just a little too closely, reaching the planet's so-called Roche limit, the boundary where the planet's gravity pulls a satellite apart. An estimated 17,000 trillion tons of ice likely exploded into Saturn's orbit over just a few days, suddenly creating what today is clearly seen as the planet's stunning rings. Watch this dramatic animated visualization showing how the process might have looked millions of years ago.
Is space destined to be the next Wild West? Since the 1960s, United Nations members have worked together to create a framework of treaties, agreements and accords that set the rules for space exploration. Because space law is made up of several different agreements, it can be difficult to understand exactly how it works. In this video, a legal scholar outlines the evolution of space law from the space race era to current commercial space flight missions.
One of the often neglected aspects of the space industry is its thousands of metric tons of waste, all just stuck in orbit around Earth. Each object, even tiny ones, pose threats to functioning craft, necessitating a change in approach before orbit fills up with too much trash. Enter the skyhook, a long-theorized launch device effectively catapulting objects into space via a cable. One scientist proposes utilizing space debris as the fulcrum of this skyhook as a more efficient launch method that also preserves outdated space objects for posterity.
Producing rockets cheaply and at scale may require atypical manufacturing processes like those developed by Relativity Space, a 3D-printer of rockets. Relativity hopes to not just compete with, but beat, SpaceX in the race to get the first...
Should we be content with being cosmic couch potatoes? In this interview, the late Professor Stephen Hawking lays out the case for continued and increased human space exploration, despite its cost and challenges.
Stellarium Web is a planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic star map, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Using its interface, you can click on object's visible at your location on the Earth...
One of the most profound mysteries of human life on earth is the presence of living cells: organic, self-organizing, reproducing creatures with a drive to survive within given set conditions. Traditional theories posit life came from divine...
Space diplomacy has become the new frontier of global politics
From roughly 60 miles above the Earth's surface to farther than light has traveled during the entire age of the universe, space has captured human imagination for millennia. Explore the final frontier with the best resources curated from across the internet.