Drilling with Curiosity

NASA likely to fly first deep space mission on less powerful rocket

Nobody Knows How This Part of Mars Exploded

On the scarred terrain of Arabia Terra, a region on Mars that serves as the setting for The Martian, lies a mysterious pockmark known as Ismenia Patera. New imagery released by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday reveals dimensions of this feature that help contextualize its geological evolution (though its origins remain unresolved).

Improved Hubble data provide fresh evidence for new physics

Measurements made by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which maps the cosmic microwave background, predicted that the Hubble constant value should now be 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec (3.3 million light-years), and could be no higher than 69 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This means that for every 3.3 million light-years farther away a galaxy is from us, it is moving 67 kilometers per second faster. But Riess’s team measured a value of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec, indicating galaxies are moving at a faster rate than implied by observations of the early universe.