Author: Nancy Shute / Source: Science News These are wondrous times for space exploration. Just when you think exploring the cosmos couldn’t possibly get more fun, another discovery delivers a new “oh wow” moment. Consider the asteroid Bennu. It’s an unprepossessing space rock that drew

Author: Lisa Grossman / Source: Science News THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Ultima Thule’s history may be written in the sum of its parts. New analyses suggest that the tiny space rock formed from rotating clouds of even smaller rocks that collapsed into two individual objects. Those objects then gently

Source: MIT Technology Review Pictures taken of the dwarf planet and its moon Charon by the New Horizons probe are changing what we know about the mysterious Kuiper Belt. Some background: The Kuiper Belt sits beyond Neptune and is filled with a number of small, icy bodies. We don’t know a lot

Author: Science News Staff / Source: Science News Artificial intelligence followed fauna, diagnosed disease, mapped the moon and more in 2018, Maria Temming reported in “Artificial intelligence is mastering a wider variety of jobs than ever before” (SN: 12/22/18 & 1/5/19, p. 25). Online

Author: Ewdison Then / Source: SlashGear Given the vastness of outer space, it’s no surprise we know very little about it. Most of the time, we can only make guesses based on images our terrestrial telescopes and a few orbital satellites have captured of celestial objects few spacecraft have