The apollo 16 landing site

This October marks 50 years since a heavily shielded spacecraft, the Soviet Union’s Venera 9, parachuted into the atmosphere of Venus. Then, having landed, it did something extraordinary: it beamed ba

Astronomers love a challenge. They place their observatories on the highest mountains, in the driest deserts, on the coldest ice shelves, beneath the deepest oceans, in orbit around Earth and the Sun,

The worst time to look at the Moon is when it’s full, right? Not necessarily. It’s true that at full Moon, sunlight hits the surface head-on, flattening the appearance of its rugged landscape of deep

In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britai

New Horizons was the first mission sent to explore Pluto, conducting a fly-by in July 2015. It was then redirected for a close pass of a much smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019. Tod

Prinz is an interesting, incomplete crater you’ll find near bright Aristarchus, the brightest large crater visible on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. Unlike sharp and relatively youthful-looking Ar