Latest articles by Keith Cooper
Mexico City is sinking up to 14 inches per year, satellite images show
Mexico City is one of the fastest subsiding cities in the world, dropping by up to 14 inches every year.
A tiny 'plutino' world beyond Neptune has grown a mysterious atmosphere, and we don't know how
A trans-Neptunian object was found to possess a surprising thin atmosphere after astronomers witnessed the object occult a distant star.
NASA is making a powerful new ion engine to send astronauts to Mars — and it just passed its 1st test
A prototype ion engine that uses lithium metal vapor as a propellant has aced its first tests, achieving 25 times more power than the ion engine on the Psyche mission.
Our Milky Way's 'Zone of Avoidance' holds a galaxy supercluster with 30,000 trillion times the sun's mass
The Vela Supercluster, in our Milky Way's Zone of Avoidance, is competing gravitationally with other superclusters for the attention of local galaxies.
Is Venus volcanically active? Big Hawaiian eruption in 2022 could help scientists find out
Evidence suggests that Venus is still volcanically active, and new data about a big eruption in Hawaii a few years ago could help scientists find out for sure.
James Webb Space Telescope's strange little red dots may really be 'black hole stars', X-ray data suggests
Finding X-rays coming from one of the little red dots discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope could be the key to answering what these weird objects truly are.
Starbirth shuts down 40,000 light-years from the Milky Way's core — and astronomers don't know why
Astronomers have found the boundary of star formation in the Milky Way's spiral disk — and it's not as far out from the center of our galaxy as you might imagine.
Scientists learn how much baby stars in Orion weigh — by watching their dance moves
"These measurements vastly expand our understanding of how stellar neighborhoods like our own are built."
Hubble Telescope celebrates 36th anniversary with gorgeous new image of famous Trifid Nebula
This latest image from Hubble forms just one of more than 1.7 million observations that the space telescope has made over the past 36 years since it launched on April 24, 1990.
Ancient volcanic ash seen blowing across Mars in new spacecraft images
New images from the Mars Express spacecraft show ancient volcanic ash spreading across the Red Planet.
Mysterious rings around Uranus point to hidden moons orbiting the ice giant
The two most puzzling rings around Uranus are gradually giving up their secrets, only to deepen the mystery of the Uranian system.
'Tall waves moving in slow motion': Here's how oily oceans on Saturn's giant moon Titan may behave
The size of waves on alien worlds will depend as much on the characteristics of the liquid as well as the gravity.
This giant telescope could discover habitable exoplanets and secrets of our universe — if it gets its funding
Things are gearing up in the development of the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, as its developers enter the final design phase before the project goes before Congress for funding.
This may be the daughter of one of our universe's 1st stars. Scientists call it an 'ancient immigrant'
The star is escaping the Large Magellanic Cloud for the Milky Way.
The moon's oldest and darkest craters could be hiding the most water ice. That's good news for future astronauts
New research shows that craters near the moon's south pole that have been in permanent shadow the longest are more likely to contain the most water ice.
All eyes on Orion’s heat shield: Artemis 2 astronauts will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10
Artemis 2's Orion capsule will hit Earth's atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph on April 10. A heat shield and 11 parachutes will help it survive the fiery trip and splash down safely.
Artemis 2 moon astronauts will try to recreate Apollo 8's historic 'Earthrise' photo during April 6 flyby
Plans are in place for the crew of Artemis 2 to try to replicate one of the most famous images ever taken from space — Apollo 8's shot of Earth rising over the moon's horizon.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be nearly 12 billion years old — so ancient its star system may no longer exist
Our solar system's famous "invader" might be as old as the Milky Way itself.
NASA is developing the '1st nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft.' What about the Voyager probes?
What is nuclear electric propulsion and how is it different from radioisotope thermoelectric generators?
Hitting the brakes: Hubble Space Telescope watches doomed comet reverse its spin
The unprecedented observations of comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák show its rotation slowing, reversing and then speeding up, and jet-like outbursts of gas might be providing the push.
Sun storms are powered by a magnetic engine 16 Earths deep, study finds
The powerful magnetic field belonging to the sun is generated far beneath the visible surface.
Astronomers keep finding new moons of Jupiter and Saturn
Astronomers have found four new moons orbiting Jupiter and 11 new moons around Saturn.
These cotton candy exoplanets hide behind a haze even the James Webb Space Telescope can't penetrate
These worlds are among the least dense ever found, and all attempts to probe their atmospheres have been blocked by a mysterious smog.
A state of matter last seen just after the Big Bang may exist inside neutron stars — and scientists think they can prove it
As binary neutron stars spiral around each other to merge, their gravitational tidal forces distort each other's shape and structure, potentially revealing clues as to what lies within them.
