Space

Looking out my window, it's a beautiful sunny day. Perhaps it's even a bit sunnier than usual here in New Mexico. Turns out, there may be a reason for that. The Earth is as close to the sun today as it will be for the whole year of 2013.

How close is close? The Earth is a mere 91,402,560 miles away from the sun today. Usually, we're right around 93 million miles. The phenomenon of getting all cuddly with our closest star is called perihelion. "Peri" means near and "Helios" was the Greek god of the sun. … Read more

We already know how to explore planets with relatively low gravity, like Mars. The Curiosity Rover is engineered to hang onto the planet's surface, despite it having just 38 percent of the gravity we enjoy on Earth. What happens if you want to check out a small moon or an asteroid with a fraction of that gravity? You design a robotic hedgehog, of course.

Stanford University researchers and NASA are working together on spiky space balls that could dance across the surfaces of moons and asteroids whose low gravity and rough surfaces would bog down a regular rover. … Read more

The moon could have some serious competition in 2013.

No, we're not finally building a real Death Star, no matter how much the American people demand one. I'm talking about a surprise visit from a recently discovered heavenly body known as the comet Ison. The chunk of ice and rock has likely broken free from the Oort cloud and is heading our way right now. If it survives the journey, astronomers say it could become even brighter than our lunar neighbor in the night sky as it makes a pass through our neighborhood next fall.

According to NASA, the wayward comet is currently hurtling toward the sun somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter's orbit. By October, it should come very near Mars, possibly allowing NASA's rovers a view as it shakes its tail in their direction. From there, it appears it will continue toward the center of the solar system, passing within a single solar diameter of the sun's surface before heading back more or less the way it came. … Read more

The Mars Curiosity rover recently detected signs of organic compounds on the Red Planet, but NASA won't call the findings definitive. One holdup is the issue of contamination. The trace amounts may be the result of contamination from the rover itself.

The contamination issue could rear its head again should the rover or future expeditions turn up any microbes. Finding microbes on Mars would be a cause for scientific celebration, but a study published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America" shows that Earth microbes could very well survive in the brutal conditions on Mars.… Read more

Around 2015, NASA plans to incorporate a spacesuit that amusingly looks like the one worn by Buzz Lightyear in "Toy Story" -- sans the shiny laser beam.

Before you laugh, know that these new digs aren't toy dressings; the Z-1 NASA spacesuit offers a plethora of advantages compared with the space agency's previous designs. Think of it as the baseline architecture for future NASA spacesuits. … Read more

It's been an eventful year here at Crave, what with the discovery of Dungeons & Dragons dice from the Ptolemaic Period; the strange tail of the robotic butt; a ship that flips over on purpose, and cow lady-parts that text farmers when it's time for a booty call.

Our retrospective gallery below gives you just a small sense of the mind-bending stories we encountered in our 2012 travels. Among the stories that grabbed your attention most (as judged by traffic and reader comments), we've got jaunts to remote geeky destinations in New Mexico, a trip aboard a giant Lego spaceship, and a look at a zombie-proof safe house. … Read more

Braving Arctic temperatures and a brutal wind chill, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft roared to life and streaked smoothly into orbit today, carrying a veteran three-man crew on a two-day flight to the International Space Station.

With commander Roman Romanenko at the controls, the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft climbed away from its launching stand at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:12 a.m. ET (6:12 p.m. local time), roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the pad into the plane of the space station's orbit.

Trailing a fiery jet of brilliant orange exhaust, the workhorse rocket arced … Read more

Going out with a bang, two small NASA probes that flew in formation to precisely map the moon's gravity field crashed into a mile-high mountainside today, slamming into the lunar surface at more than a mile per second to bring a successful $500 million mission to an abrupt end.

The "targeted impacts" were intended to eliminate even a slight chance that one of the satellites might one day fall to the surface at or near a so-called "lunar heritage site," including six where manned Apollo missions landed and more than a dozen where unmanned U.… Read more

Streaking through vacuum at a mile per second just above the cratered surface of the moon, two washing machine-size science probes that have completed their mission to map the lunar gravity field will slam into a mile-high mountainside Monday, bringing a successful $500 million mission to a kamikaze conclusion.

The twin probes, named Ebb and Flow in a student naming contest, have been flying in formation at extremely low altitude since January 1, 2012, mapping subtle changes in the moon's gravitational pull to gain insights into its internal structure.

With all of the mission's scientific objectives accomplished, the … Read more