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in Space (2 stories)
science

Surprising Signs of an Atmosphere Around a Tiny World, Billions of Miles Away

Astronomers Find Possible Atmosphere on a Distant World. The Universe, As It Turns Out, Is Full of Surprises.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected surprising signs of an atmosphere around a small rocky world billions of miles from Earth. The findings suggest the presence of volcanic gases or other atmospheric components on a body previously thought too small or too distant to retain one. Scient...

Whether you take five minutes today to feel genuine wonder about this. Whether you share it with a curious child who might grow up to study it. Whether you let it briefly remind you how vast and st...

science

The Little Probe That Could: Why Voyager 1 Matters, and Why NASA Just Switched Part of It Off

Voyager 1, 47 Years Into the Void, Keeps Going. NASA Adjusts. The Mission Continues.

NASA has switched off one of Voyager 1's instruments or systems to conserve power, as the probe's plutonium power source continues its slow, inevitable decline. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is the most distant human-made object ever — currently over 24 billion kilometers from Earth. Engineers rou...

Whether you take five minutes to genuinely appreciate that humans launched an object in 1977 — before the internet, before personal computers — that is still calling home from beyond our solar syst...