Space

The U.S. Space Force is getting serious about drone threats. Space Force is looking to boost its ability to deter and defeat uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Eastern Range, the 15-million-square-mile (39 million square kilometers) stretch of airspace over the Atlantic Ocean through which the United States launches most of its space…

For the first time, scientists have mapped vast, continent-scale river drainage systems on Mars — ancient networks that may also be among the most promising places to search for signs of past life. Billions of years ago, before the Red Planet became the frigid desert it is today, water sculpted its surface on a massive scale. For decades, Mars has tempted scientists with whispered clues of that…

The Voyager 2 mission may have caught Uranus at a special time during which the ice giant’s radiation belts were being supercharged with electrons accelerated by a similar process to what can drive geomagnetic storms on Earth. This realization, resulting from placing old data from Voyager 2 under new scrutiny, could help explain several puzzling aspects of Uranus’s magnetic…

The first astronauts to set foot on Mars should hunt for signs of past or present Red Planet life. That’s the overarching conclusion of an in-depth report about human Mars exploration from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that came out today (Dec. 9). “The detection of life on Mars is a persistent top priority for explorers of many disciplines, and it…