Science

Flawed Tests on Earth May Explain Why NASA’s Rovers Get Stuck on Mars

Flawed Tests on Earth May Explain Why NASA’s Rovers Get Stuck on Mars

In the spring of 2019, the six-wheeled Spirit rover was driving backwards to drag an inoperable front right wheel when it got stuck on the sandy Martian surface. Despite spending months trying to excavate its robot, NASA could not free Spirit. Now, engineers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison may have figured out a way to better prepare NASA’s robots for …

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Satellites are helping protect critically endangered desert elephants. Here’s how

Satellites are helping protect critically endangered desert elephants. Here’s how

Drought is forcing Namibian desert elephants to seek water near human settlements. But human encounters with the giant mammals frequently end in tragedies. Elephants are being shot, and their population is shrinking. A conservation project using a combination of GPS data and high-resolution satellite images is trying to help the two species coexist in peace. Without it, the rare desert …

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‘Sleeping Giant’ Fault Under Canada Shows Major Earthquake Potential

‘Sleeping Giant’ Fault Under Canada Shows Major Earthquake Potential

After 12 millennia of relative inactivity, a geologic fault that stretches across the territory of Yukon, Canada, and Alaska now appears capable of producing a major earthquake, according to a new study. The findings point to an underrecognized source of seismic hazard in northwestern Canada. Scientists previously believed that the Tintina fault, which extends roughly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from …

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SpaceX astronauts International Space Station

SpaceX astronauts International Space Station

A SpaceX Falcon Nine rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A carrying NASA’s Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., August 1, 2025. Steve Nesius | Reuters SpaceX delivered a fresh crew to the International Space Station on Saturday, making the trip in a quick 15 hours. The four U.S., Russian and Japanese astronauts pulled …

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Ghana has a rare treasure, a crater made when a meteor hit Earth: why it needs to be protected

Ghana has a rare treasure, a crater made when a meteor hit Earth: why it needs to be protected

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Impact craters are formed when an object from space such as a meteoroid, asteroid or comet strikes the Earth at a very high velocity. This leaves an excavated circular hole on the Earth’s surface. It is a basic geological process …

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Earth, Mars, Venus — and a long-lost planet — may have once ‘waltzed’ in perfect harmony around the sun

Earth, Mars, Venus — and a long-lost planet — may have once ‘waltzed’ in perfect harmony around the sun

Four of the solar system‘s terrestrial planets, including Earth and a long-lost world, likely started life waltzing around the sun to a fixed rhythm, according to a new study. The findings also suggest that those planets formed earlier than previously thought. Astronomers have been increasingly interested in how planetary systems change their internal architecture on cosmic timescales, motivated by several …

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Harvard researchers find link between mother’s age, child’s sex

Harvard researchers find link between mother’s age, child’s sex

In a study published July 18 in the journal Science Advances, Wang and her co-authors came up with a partial answer. They analyzed a dataset of 58,007 women and their children and concluded that, in some cases, a child’s sex correlates with the mother’s age. Women who had their first child at age 29 or older were more likely to …

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