OSIRIS-REx is About to Meet an Asteroid

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, the space agency’s first craft to bring samples from an asteroid back to Earth, is set to rendezvous with its target, Bennu, at around noon EST today. A special webcast is scheduled for just before the spacecraft reaches Bennu, at 11:45 a.m. EST. During this webcast, NASA officials and scientists will discuss the mission in depth. OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) launched in September of ...read more

The First Crewed ISS Flight Since An Emergency Landing Happens Monday. Astronauts Say They’re Confident in Russian Rocket

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, KAZAKHSTAN - It was not even two months ago that a crew confidently told the Russian space commission here that it was ready to perform its duties in space. The journey was supposed to take half a year, but it only ended up being a few minutes. Expedition 57's Soyuz rocket rose from the ground, began to experience some strange vibration, and then triggered an abort. Its two crew members returned home safely, but it left behind a trail of problems for the Russian space pr ...read more

Give the gift of citizen science this year!

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Overwhelmed with holiday shopping? Well, maybe our team can help you out with some gifts that support citizen science! Whether it's a kit or some citizen science project swag, there are a lot of ways to show your support and share the world of citizen science with your friends and relatives. Cheers! The SciStarter Team Pocket Lab Want high dollar lab equipment for less than $100? Try the Pocket Lab -- you can measure motion, acceleration, angular velocity, magnetic field, pressu ...read more

It’s a Small Solar System After All

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Many years ago, this magazine was owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, and I would sometimes get one of the company's earworm songs caught in my head: "It's a Small World," the musical accompaniment to the ride of the same name at Disney World in Florida. That song has popped up in my brain again recently, but in a very different and more majestic context. We are entering a new stage in the exploration of the solar system, one that inverts the theme of much that came before. Big is out and ...read more

Moms Aren’t the Only Ones who Pass on Mitochondrial DNA

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

If you think way, way back to your high school biology class, you might remember a little cellular structure called the mitochondrion. Its claim to fame is that it’s the “powerhouse” of the cell — the organelle in charge of creating energy. But it also contains its own DNA, separate from the traditional DNA we think of, which lives in the nucleus of a cell. That nuclear DNA contains genetic information from both of our parents. But in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), that genet ...read more