World Explained · Space
How can engineers recreate moon-dust conditions for lunar hardware?
NASA uses lunar-soil simulant, vacuum, temperature swings and controlled dust exposure to test hardware on Earth—useful evidence, but not a miniature Moon.
Curiosity Desk category
Space articles
Every published story filed under Space, newest first. Each one passed the same source, image and editorial checks.
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World Explained · Space
How can ancient star clusters reveal a major merger in the Milky Way's early years?
Hubble and Gaia used ancient cluster ages, chemistry and motion to reconstruct an early Milky Way merger—without photographing the collision.
World Explained · Space
Why stars twinkle but planets usually shine more steadily
A star is normally steady while moving air makes its point of light jump, brighten and change colour. A planet usually looks calmer because its tiny disk averages much of the disturbance.
World Explained · Space
Psyche borrowed Mars for one perfect turn and tested its future
NASA's Psyche spacecraft used Mars to change speed and direction without a large propellant burn, then turned the flyby into a rehearsal for a metal-world mission.
World Explained · Space
Why black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners
Black holes do not roam space sucking up everything nearby. Their gravity follows the same rules as any equal mass until an object ventures dangerously close.
World Explained · Space
How astronomers find a planet they cannot see
A planet can remain an unresolved point beside its star yet betray itself through a repeating dip in starlight. The dip reveals an orbit and size, but only after careful checks.
World Explained · Space
Webb found a hidden planet by reading its chemical fingerprint
Beta Pictoris d was concealed by a bright debris disk. Webb separated it from the glare by finding molecules and motion inside a spatially resolved spectrum.
World Explained · Space
The asteroid that missed its radar appointment and turned out to be a comet
A near-Earth object failed to appear where gravity predicted. Its tiny unexplained push led astronomers to a faint tail and a new identity.
World Explained · Space
The oldest light we can see fills the entire sky
Look in any direction far enough and you meet the same ancient glow: light released when the universe first became transparent, about 380,000 years after the big bang.
World Explained · Space
Why are sunsets on Mars blue? What its sky really looks like
Does Mars have a blue sky? Usually not. Its dusty daytime sky looks tan to reddish, but a blue-grey halo can gather around the Sun at sunrise and sunset.
World Explained · Space
How a day on Venus outlasts an entire Venus year
Venus needs about 243 Earth days to turn once but only about 225 to orbit the Sun. Then its backwards spin creates an even stranger sunrise clock.
World Explained · Space
Why the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth
Mirrors left on the Moon reveal a change too small to see but large enough to reshape two worlds: the lunar orbit grows by about 3.8 centimetres each year.
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