Origami Spaceship

Spaceship launching into outer space.

What ancient craft is out of this world?!  This is Sandra Tsing Loh, with the Loh Down on Science. Space is COLD! About minus four hundred and fifty five degrees Fahrenheit. Brr! Such chilly temperatures can turn spaceship materials brittle. Is there a way to make them more sturdy at

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Space Spiders

Spiderweb

Oh what a tangled web we weave…in space?! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Many spider webs found in nature are asymmetrical: their top part is smaller than the bottom. Could GRAVITY play a role in this off-center web weaving? Samuel Zschokke from the University

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Vanishing Planets

Who can solve the Case of the Vanishing Planet…?  This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Down on Science… and a cold case from outer space. In two thousand four, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a photo of the planet Fomalhaut-b.  Astronomers noticed something odd about Foh-b. It wasn’t

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Space Cans

Can you build a spaceship out of a soda can? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Space is a tough place to be. Flying debris, intense radiation, and alien blasters will tear you apart! So, spaceships gotta be tougher. That usually means building materials that

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Stormy Stripes

Five hundred leagues under the WIND? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Jupiter – it’s one stylish planet! Its red, gold, and orange stripes – formed by violent winds and weather – give it an unmistakable look. For years, scientists have wondered how deep the

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Laser Sailing

Space…the final frontier! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Breakthrough Starshot is a globally funded engineering research project. Their mission? To send thin, sheetlike “starChips” into space and take closeup pictures of alien stars. A whole fleet of these objects is designed to sail through

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Life in Space

Men are from Mars. Women, from Venus. Really? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying not exactly. But check out this intriguing new cosmic discovery from the University of Nice. Researchers there were simulating conditions commonly found in comets. Why? To see if life might

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Not-So-Final Frontier

Space — the final frontier! And your next vacation destination? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying B-Y-O-O! Bring your own oxygen – there isn’t any! But what if space is more habitable than we thought? Caltech researchers Yunxi Yao and Konstantinos Giapis reached for

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Moon Walk

Moon walking: Not as easy as it looks! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. For astronauts, the moon’s weaker gravity can be disorienting. How do we know? Astronauts stumble! NASA has the blooper reels to prove it. That’s because gravity doesn’t just anchor us. It

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Martian Gardens

We’ve all heard of “farm to table”—But what if your table is on Mars? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. It’s hard to get fresh veggies in space. But future colonists will need them for long-term survival. Enter researchers from Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

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