All Stories by Ron Cowen
- Astronomy
Infrared telescope spies mountains of star creation
Viewing a star-making region in the infrared, the Spitzer Space Telescope has captured mountains of gas and dust being eroded by winds and radiation from a massive star, triggering waves of star birth.
- Planetary Science
Cassini snaps icy moon Dione
Saturn's small moon Dione has a heavily-cratered, fractured surface.
- Planetary Science
Groovy Science
The Cassini spacecraft is shedding new light on Saturn's icy rings.
- Planetary Science
Protecting Earth: Gravitational tractor could lure asteroids off course
Relying solely on the tug of gravity, a proposed spacecraft could divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
- Planetary Science
New Partners: Hubble finds more moons around Pluto
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two tiny moons orbiting Pluto, giving this planet a total of three satellites.
- Physics
A matter of gravity
Gravity Probe B has finished its test of general relativity but results of the study won't be known for another year.
- Planetary Science
Shoreline for Titan?
New radar images of Saturn's smog-shrouded moon Titan show evidence of a shoreline cutting across the moon's southern hemisphere.
- Planetary Science
’10th planet’ has a partner
The so-called 10th planet, an object larger than Pluto that ranks as the most distant body known in the solar system, has a moon.
- Planetary Science
Mining the moon
New ultraviolet images of the moon help identify the presence of ilmenite, a titanium oxide whose elemental constituents may be a valuable resource for sustaining humans as they explore the lunar surface.
- Planetary Science
Mission to the outer limits
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy Space Center, where engineers are doing final testing before the craft begins its 9-year voyage to the outer solar system.
- Planetary Science
Saturnian sponge
The first close-up portrait of Saturn's icy moon Hyperion reveals a spongy-looking surface unlike that of any other known moon.
- Planetary Science
What whacked the inner solar system?
Planetary scientists have determined that the cavalcade of space debris that hammered the inner solar system for the first 700 million years of its existence were main-belt asteroids, not comets.
