Artemis II Splashdown Gives NASA Momentum in Renewed Moon Race
The astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — captivated the world with their historic mission.
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The astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — captivated the world with their historic mission.
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Over 10 days, the astronauts of NASA’s lunar flyby mission have achieved the near impossible.
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While science can seem colorless and plain, NASA’s lunar crew members have brought expressiveness and emotion about their journey to mission control and the public.
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Fifty-six years ago, after a tense race to save the Apollo 13 crew, the astronauts finally splashed down safely. Here’s what flight directors who got them home remember.
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Eyes on the Far Side of the Moon
See the photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts during their moon flyby.
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They’re Going to the Moon and They Know Not Everyone Is With Them
Can the four astronauts of the NASA mission Artemis II make a difference in a distracted and divided world?
By Timothy Bella and

Did Scientists Just Detect an Exploding Black Hole?
An underwater observatory recently detected a startlingly energetic cosmic neutrino. One possible cause involves a phenomenon that so far exists only in theory.
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How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain.
A new satellite could transform how water is studied worldwide. But to help unlock its capabilities, scientists first needed to take critical measurements on a mountaintop.
By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and

A Meteor Exploded Over Ohio. Then the Chase Began.
After a seven-ton fireball exploded above the Cleveland area, a group of meteorite hunters descended too, in the name of science — and possibly cash.
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Exploding Comet Is Spotted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
In a stroke of luck, astronomers saw the comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) break into four or five fragments in November after it passed close to the sun.
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A Big Night Light in the Sky? Start-Up Wants to Launch a Space Mirror.
The company is seeking F.C.C. approval to test an idea to reflect sunlight to Earth at night, possibly powering solar panels. Critics say it could be bad for people and wildlife.
By Kenneth Chang and

Experiment Shows Possibility of Martian Microbes Hitching a Ride to Earth
Hardy bacteria in a lab survived pressures comparable to an asteroid strike on the red planet, suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which our planet was seeded with life.
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Norway’s Century-Long Watch on the Northern Lights
The nation’s northern region has led the scientific quest to understand the aurora borealis. This summer, a 10,000-antenna radar is expected to begin the next phase of exploration.
By Alexa Robles-Gil and

John Noble Wilford, Times Reporter Who Covered the Moon Landing, Dies at 92
He gave readers a comprehensive and lyrical account of the historic mission in 1969. His science coverage as a Pulitzer-winning journalist and an author took him around the world.
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Artemis II Crew Reunites With Families and Fellow NASA Astronauts
The four astronauts made an emotional return to Houston a day after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their 10-day lunar journey.
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Artemis II Splashdown Gives NASA Momentum in Renewed Moon Race
The astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — captivated the world with their historic mission.
By

Highlights From NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Splashdown
The crew of three Americans and one Canadian are to return to Houston on Saturday after concluding a journey that sent humans around the moon for the first time since 1972.

Another Giant Leap Reminds Us How Small We Are
A mission that took four astronauts farther than any human has ever traveled in the history of mankind has made people feel a little trippy.
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‘It Was Survival Mode’: The Lunar Mission That Nearly Ended in Disaster
Fifty-six years ago, after a tense race to save the Apollo 13 crew, the astronauts finally splashed down safely. Here’s what flight directors who got them home remember.
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This Powerful Telescope Quickly Found 2,100 New Asteroids
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to find millions of unknown objects in our solar system, and perhaps even a mysterious Planet Nine.
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Vera Rubin Scientists Reveal Telescope’s First Images
Scenes of nebulas in the Milky Way, a cluster of galaxies and thousands of new asteroids are a teaser of how the U.S.-funded observatory on a mountain in Chile will transform astronomy.
By Kenneth Chang and

Vera Rubin’s Legacy Lives On in a Troubled Scientific Landscape
A powerful new telescope will usher in a new era of cosmic discovery, but in a political climate vastly different from when it was named for a once overlooked female astronomer.
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How Astronomers Will Deal With 60 Million Billion Bytes of Imagery
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will make the study of stars and galaxies more like the big data-sorting exercises of contemporary genetics and particle physics.
By Kenneth Chang and

Earth’s Largest Camera Takes 3 Billion-Pixel Images of the Night Sky
At the heart of the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a digital camera that will create an unparalleled map of the cosmos.
By Jonathan CorumKenneth Chang and

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Happy Birthday, LIGO. Now Drop Dead.
Ten years ago, astronomers made an epic discovery with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Cosmology hasn’t been the same since, and it might not stay that way much longer.
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Scientific Discoveries, and Dreams, in the Balance
Research breakthroughs are often sagas of passion, curiosity and sacrifice. If Trump’s proposed budget cuts for 2026 are enacted, many such journeys may never get started.
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A Century of Human Detritus, Visualized
“Technostuff” built in the last 100 years outweighs all the living matter on Earth.
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For his next trick, your cosmic correspondent for the past quarter-century will (try to) retire.
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First Close-Up of Star Outside Our Galaxy Shows a Giant About to Blow
Astronomers zoomed in on a stellar behemoth in the Larger Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy that orbits about 160,000 light-years from the Milky Way.
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The four astronauts spoke at a news conference Thursday afternoon at Johnson Space Center in Houston about their journey around the moon and back to Earth.
By Kenneth Chang and Adeel Hassan

New video shows the moment the Orion capsule opened after landing last week. Inside were the Artemis II astronauts who had completed a 10-day mission around the moon.
By Cynthia Silva

After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, the Artemis II crew members reunited with their friends, families and fellow NASA astronauts in Houston on Saturday. Their voyage was the first trip by humans into deep space in more than half a century.
By Jorge Mitssunaga

The four astronauts aboard Artemis II splashed down at 8:07 p.m. Eastern time in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on Friday, concluding their historic 10-day mission, the first to send humans to the moon in more than 50 years.
By Jackeline Luna

The Artemis II crew returns to Earth after a historic lunar flyby.

Here’s what you need to know about Artemis II and the splashdown of the Orion capsule.
By Ashley Ahn

Take a tour of the room where the team behind Artemis II is working to bring the astronauts home.
By Marco Hernandez, Malika Khurana and Katrina Miller

After a successful flight around the moon, the astronauts are relying on a flawed heat shield to protect them as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.
By Kenneth Chang

The Artemis II crew prepared for their return home and NASA inspected the exterior of the Orion spacecraft, which is scheduled to land in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California on Friday.
By Nailah Morgan

Space Junk provides an imaginative look at space exploration’s future and past.
By Steven Kurutz
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