The “alien” is actually a potato. Specifically, it is a purple tuber nicknamed Spudnik-1, grown and photographed by Pettit.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. This ...

A strange, tentacled object that went viral online was revealed to be a space-grown purple potato. Astronaut Don Pettit cultivated the unusual specimen during a microgravity gardening experiment, ...

NASA’s Dragonfly will explore the air, land and seas of Titan, Saturn’s most mysterious moon NASA plans to launch a wildly ambitious nuclear-powered octocopter to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 2028 ...

Astronaut Hansen reported huge swaths of brown hues and tinges of green. The tan striations may be iron oxide (as in rust) ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Fusion drive spaceship arriving in Mars orbit, illustration. NASA plans a 2028 nuclear-powered Mars mission using SR-1 Freedom and ...

Free-return trajectory – a path that loops around the Moon and returns to Earth without propulsion Permanently shadowed regions – areas near the lunar poles that never receive sunlight and may contain ...

Donald Trump has hailed the astronauts of the Artemis II mission, saying they have “made history and made all of America ...

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After Artemis II, there are still plenty of exciting space missions to look out for in 2026. Here are 6 of the best.

"Mars’ wind has often carved odd shapes into the surface through a combination of physical and chemical weathering processes.

Doomsday meteors get a bad rap. For decades, these poor rocks have been tarnished in the press and demonized in major ...