Articles by William Harwood

New images of Ultima Thule, the small chunk of primordial debris NASA’s New Horizons probe zoomed past on New Year’s Day, came into much sharper focus on Wednesday, revealing a snowman-shaped object.

After a six-month voyage from Earth, NASA’s InSight Mars lander, streaking through space at at some 12,300 mph, will slam into the thin martian atmosphere Monday to begin a nail-biting six-and-a-half-minute descent to the surface, kicking off a billion-dollar mission to probe the red planet’s hidden interior.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory should be out of ‘safe mode’ and back in operation soon after engineers traced a recent problem to one of the telescopes gyroscopes. A backup has been activated that should resolve the matter.