Ed Stone, the scientist who guided NASA’s groundbreaking Voyager mission to the outer planets for 50 years and led the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when it landed the first rover on Mars, died Tuesday. He was 88 years old. A physicist on the ground floor of space exploration, Stone played a leading role in NASA missions… Read More »
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Search Satellite (TESS) may have discovered its first free-floating or “orphan” planet. This is a planet wandering alone in the universe, without a star. The potential discovery suggests that TESS could use it to detect these so-called rogue planets, a phenomenon first proposed by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. Having discovered more… Read More »
Scientists have found that some planets can migrate towards the heart of planetary systems early in their lives; This probably explains the lack of planets we see that are about twice as wide as Earth. Over the years, scientists have managed to observe many exoplanets smaller or larger than Earth, but planets exactly 1.6 to… Read More »