ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA’s Artemis II mission got the limelight this week, but U.S. Space Force has an arsenal of other space-bound hardware muscling onto Florida’s launch pads this year.

This year’s schedule from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station already features six different rockets. Vying for many of the ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — United Launch Alliance managed its second mission of the year early Saturday with one its few remaining Atlas V rockets on the latest trip to put up more Amazon satellites into orbit.

The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 at 1:46 a.m. with 29 more broadband satellites for ...Read more

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why does some rain fall harder than other rain? – Naomi B., age 9, San Fancisco, California

There are some days when the rain falls peacefully and gently, nourishing the ...Read more

The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission punched their moon ticket on Thursday afternoon — but back at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, teams are already refocusing on the launch of Artemis III next year.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were given the...Read more

Southern California’s Salton Sea was once a resort playground, with sunny beaches, celebrities and people waterskiing on the vast inland lake in the 1950s and ’60s.

Today, those resorts are long gone, replaced by a drying and increasingly toxic landscape. As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lake bed kicks up toxic...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Crimson the baby mountain lion had a rough start to life. He lost the toes on one of his hind feet and, at just 3 weeks old, was separated from his family and left alone in a den to starve.

But the Southern California cub experienced a positive turn of fate when state wildlife officials rescued him last week and transported him ...Read more

Virtual reality was once touted as the next big frontier for gaming, promising to bring players into immersive worlds. Meta, Sony and Valve have worked to establish the medium, but its adoption hasn’t taken off like console or mobile gaming has.

Nevertheless, developers are forging ahead, and one of the more successful VR studios is ...Read more

Federal regulators on Thursday renewed the license for California’s last nuclear power plant, ensuring Diablo Canyon will remain open until at least 2030 after years of debate over safety, climate goals and the state’s ability to keep the lights on.

The plant on the San Luis Obispo County coast, about 200 miles south of San Jose, provides ...Read more

A new generation of AI surveillance towers from General Dynamics has been deployed along San Diego’s stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border.

General Dynamics uses Phoenix-based PureTech Systems’ AI software, trained on years of footage from earlier systems. Using a combination of cameras and radar, the towers can distinguish a human from a cow, ...Read more

It had been 53 years, 3 months and 17 days since the Apollo 17 crew — the final moon landing mission — left lunar orbit, headed back to Earth and ended an era.

But a new era has finally begun with the Wednesday launch of the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center, an event that will kickstart the agency’s plans to venture back to a ...Read more

When Artemis II took off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, it had one especially cute crew member aboard — "Rise," a stuffed toy created by an 8-year-old boy from California that will indicate for astronauts when they have reached weightlessness.

Lucas Ye, from Mountain View, won an international competition to design the toy, which...Read more

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission around the moon got some relief overnight after troubleshooting a malfunctioning toilet on the Orion spacecraft.

It’s not as if there was a plumbing backup on the toilet that will make history as the first ever in deep space. Instead, the crew reported a blinking fault light.

“We had a ...Read more

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced new initiatives to tackle microplastics in the human body and drinking water Thursday.

Kennedy said the government will create a new $144 million program called STOMP, for the systematic targeting of ...Read more

Environmental groups have filed multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration over its decision earlier this week to broadly exempt the oil and gas industry from requirements that protect all endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

In one federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington, D.C., a coalition of four Gulf advocacy organizations ...Read more

Spring is here — and wildlife activity is heating up in California.

“The arrival of warmer weather means black bears will be emerging from winter dens and actively searching for food,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a Facebook post March 16. “This includes mother bears with new cubs of the year and quite often ...Read more

This week, the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention posted online its first large tranche of advanced genetic data from measles viruses spreading last year. Scientists with knowledge of the operation expect the agency to post heaps more in weeks to come, revealing whether the U.S. has lost its hard-won measles elimination status.

The CDC...Read more