Leah Crane

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Leah Crane

Space Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft has landed on the surface of the moon, but it seems to have fallen over and we do not yet know if it will be able to drill for ice Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander has made it to the moon, but it seems to have fallen over. The lander is still working, but it is not yet clear which parts of its mission it will still be able to accomplish.

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Leah Crane

Right now, a lot of planets are visible in the night sky. A great alignment, which occurs when all the solar system’s planets are visible at once, has just ended, but you can still spot most of them except for Mercury and Venus, which have already dipped below the horizon. So naturally, for the past month, my phone has been dinging with friends’ pictures of the sky, accompanied by, “Hey, what planet is this?” or, “This is Mars, right?” As the designated Space Friend, I am expected to…

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Leah Crane

All of our solar system’s planets are lining in the night sky at once this week. This extraordinary celestial event will see the sky scattered with seven visible planets in what is known as a great planetary alignment, or a “planetary parade”. The eight planets in our solar system orbit the sun in roughly the same plane, because they all originally formed from the same disc of debris around the sun.

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Leah Crane

Science fiction, from The Jetsons to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is replete with humanoid robots. But for a long time in the real world, such robots have been a novelty at best and a punchline at worst. Somehow, though, in the last few years, things have shifted. More than a handful of companies are developing humanoid robots, and these technological simulacra have begun popping up in automobile factories and shipping outfits. Some firms are even promising household robots.

2 months ago | newscientist.com | Leah Crane

Many millions of years after the big bang, a point of light arose in a dark universe. This first star began to blast out radiation, which knocked electrons off the surrounding fog of hydrogen. More stars formed, turning nearly all the opaque, neutral hydrogen atoms into a transparent broth of ionised hydrogen, so that light could travel freely through the expanding cosmos. This was the end of the cosmic dark ages and the start of galaxy formation.