NASA

Icy Hearts: A heart-shaped calving front of a glacier in Greenland (left) and Pluto’s frozen plains (right). Credits: NASA/Maria-Jose Viñas and NASA/APL/SwRIFrom deep below the soil at Earth’s polar regions to Pluto’s frozen heart, ice exists all over the solar system…and beyond. From right here on our home planet to moons and planets millions of miles away, we’re exploring ice and watching how it changes. Here’s 10 things to know:1. Earth’s Changing Ice SheetsAn Antarctic ice sheet. Credit: NASAIce sheets are massive expanses of ice that stay frozen from year to year and cover more than 6 million square miles. On Earth, ice sheets extend across most of Greenland and Antarctica. These two ice sheets contain more than 99 percent of the planet’s freshwater ice. However, our ice sheets are se...

WASHINGTON — Boeing is taking another charge against earnings of $250 million on its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew program as the company’s new leader vowed it will not walk away from troubled programs like it. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Oct. 23, Boeing disclosed it took the charge in its fiscal third quarter “primarily to reflect schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs.” This is in addition to a $125 million loss the company recorded in the second quarter. The company had warned Oct. 11 that it would take a total of $2 billion in charges in the third quarter on four fixed-price programs in its Defense, Space and Security, or BDS, business unit, including Starliner. The company did not state then how large the Starliner char...

We launched our Spitzer Space Telescope into orbit around the Sunday on Aug. 25, 2003. Since then, the observatory has been lifting the veil on the wonders of the cosmos, from our own solar system to faraway galaxies, using infrared light.Thanks to Spitzer, scientists were able to confirm the presence of seven rocky, Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. The telescope has also provided weather maps of hot, gaseous exoplanets and revealed a hidden ring around Saturn. It has illuminated hidden collections of dust in a wide variety of locations, including cosmic nebulas (clouds of gas and dust in space), where young stars form, and swirling galaxies. Spitzer has additionally investigated some of the universe’s oldest galaxies and stared at the black hole at the center of the Milky Way....

MILAN — A group of existing and proposed spaceports are joining forces to share lessons learned and potentially develop standards for launch facilities around the world. Eight spaceports in six countries signed a memorandum of understanding Oct. 13 during an event held on the sidelines of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here. The agreement outlines plans for the launch facilities to work together to address issues in the development and operation of their facilities. “This partnership demonstrates our collective commitment to underscore the importance of spaceports, supporting their future, and enabling a new era of innovation, security and economic growth in the space industry,” said Roosevelt “Ted” Mercer, head of the Virginia Spaceport Authority, which operates t...

Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than TexasMercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.2. Venus: Tough on Space RocksVenus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off m...