Astronaut muscles waste away on long space flights, reducing their capacity for physical work by more than 40 percent, according to new research. This is the equivalent of a 30- to 50-year-old crew member's muscles deteriorating to that of an 80-year-old. The destructive effects of extended weightlessness to skeletal muscle -- despite in-flight exercise -- pose a significant safety risk for future human missions to Mars and elsewhere in the universe.
Astronomers have analyzed light passing through the upper atmosphere of the giant planet HD 80606 b, about 190 light years from Earth, and determined that its atmosphere contains the element potassium.
An international team of astronomers using gravitational lensing observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step forward in the quest to solve the riddle of dark energy, a phenomenon which mysteriously appears to power the universe's accelerating expansion.