Space, Moon | featured news

A British astrobiology conference has revived a years-old debate over the best place to look for life elsewhere in the solar system: Mars, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn? "For reasons I don't really understand, the wider solar system and the potential for life there has not been high priority," The Telegraph quoted Robert Pappalardo, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as saying on BBC Radio 4.

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday.

Space exploration has long been about reaching far off destinations but now there's a race to exploit new frontiers by mining their minerals. When Neil Armstrong first stepped on the Moon in 1969, it was part of a "flags and footprints" strategy to beat the Soviets, a triumph of imagination and innovation, not an attempt to extract precious metals.

At 5:28 p.m. Monday, NASA’s Grail spacecraft will crash into the Moon’s shadows. (What would you call the half of the Moon facing away from the Sun?)

Attention wealthy nations and billionaires: A team of former NASA executives will fly you to the moon in an out-of-this-world commercial venture combining the wizardry of Apollo and the marketing of Apple. For a mere $1.5 billion, the business is offering countries the chance to send two people to the moon and back, either for research or national prestige. And if you are an individual with that kind of money to spare, you too can go the moon for a couple days.

The surface of Saturn's huge moon Titan has the consistency of soft, wet sand with a fragile crust on top, a new analysis of a nearly eight-year-old space probe landing suggests.

Long landslides spotted on Saturn's moon, Iapetus, could help provide clues to similar movements of material on Earth. Scientists studying the icy satellite have determined that flash heating could cause falling ice to travel 10 to 15 times farther than previously expected on Iapetus.

Pluto may have been kicked out of the planet club, but it has gained yet another companion. Scientists announced Wednesday the discovery of the smallest moon yet around the icy orb, bringing the tally of known moons to five. "We're not finished searching yet," said Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins University, who thinks there may be more lurking.

The Cassini spacecraft captures striking images from flying by three moons of Saturn, including new pictures of Enceladus's gushing geysers.

For explorers searching for life beyond Earth, the siren song of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, trills sweetly. “Europa has the best chance of having life there today,” said Britney Schmidt, who studies the moon at the University of Texas at Austin. Astrobiologists think so because NASA’s Galileo probe found strong evidence for a deep, briny ocean covering the entire moon deep under the icy surface.