NASA follows international guidelines called the Planetary Protection protocol, aimed at making sure Earth’s biology doesn’t taint celestial bodies, and vice versa. The agency also has a dedicated team, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s biotechnology and planetary protection group, or B.P.P.G., that oversees efforts to avoid cross-contamination on missions. Several scientists behind the new research, including…
Two billion years after the cosmos banged into existence, a mysterious force known as dark energy began shoving space outward, causing the universe to balloon faster and faster and threatening to one day rip apart everything within it, from clusters of galaxies to particles inside atoms. Astronomers have taken on the behemoth task of figuring…
For years, SpaceX’s mission was clear: Get humans to Mars. “The most powerful thing we could do is establish a second, self-sustaining civilization outside of Earth,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, told Forbes in 2003, a year after founding the company. “And the only place that’s really feasible is Mars.” As a reminder of that…
As astronaut Victor Glover made his way to the moon earlier this month on NASA’s Artemis II mission, he reflected on the incredible miracle that is planet Earth. “You are special,” Glover told an interviewer. Space, he said, “is a whole bunch of nothing.” But in the midst all that nothing, Glover could see a…
