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Lasers shine a new light on the space junk air pollution problem

Scientists are using a new technique to study incoming space debris and its effects on Earth's atmosphere.

Falling space debris poses an escalating risk as spacecraft get stronger and more heat resistant

When it comes to space debris, what goes up is coming down more often – and not safely. When spacecraft launch, some components, including nonreusable rocket boosters, are jettisoned to decrease ...

Scientists have found another world with an atmosphere

The finding comes with significant new suggestions about the solar system ...

Surprising Signs of an Atmosphere Around a Tiny World, Billions of Miles Away

A gradual dimming and brightening when a star passed behind it suggested the mini-Pluto was wrapped in a thin layer of air.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab make a breakthrough in rotor technology

A little more than three years since NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter ended its pioneering mission at Mars, engineers at the Jet ...
Smithsonian Magazine

This Tiny Celestial Body Past Pluto Shouldn’t Have an Atmosphere—but Astronomers Say They May Have Detected One

Worlds this small and distant are thought to be too cold and have too little surface gravity to hold onto gases. But the findings suggest that icy, rocky objects in the solar system's outer reaches ar ...
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Supersonic airliners, ozone, and wildfire smoke: Origins of the nuclear winter theory

When atmospheric chemists Paul Crutzen and John Birks added smoke into their computer models of nuclear war scenarios, they ...
Morning Overview on MSN

A tiny ‘plutino’ beyond Neptune has a thin atmosphere 10 million times thinner than Earth’s — and it shouldn’t have one at all

A small, icy world orbiting beyond Neptune has no business holding onto an atmosphere. It is too small, too cold, and too far ...