Category: Space

Humans are about to make history by sending a little piece of a Martian rock back to the surface of Mars for the first time ever. The meteorite fragment Sayh…

NASA on Monday gave its latest Mars rover Perseverance the all clear to launch later this week on a mission to seek out signs of ancient microbial life. “The launch…

A stunning flash of ultraviolet light from an exploding white dwarf has been detected by astronomers for only the second time, and could give researchers important clues about what spurs…

It’s common knowledge that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System. Around it, the planets orbit – along with a thick belt of asteroids, some meteor fields, and…

The Hubble space telescope has spent the past 30 years orbiting 547 km (340 miles) above Earth. The ageing satellite has had a couple of hiccups in the last few…

China has launched its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars. A rocket holding an orbiter, lander and rover took flight from the country’s Hainan province earlier this week, with hopes to deploy…

In the very early days of the Solar System, baby Earth may have taken a much shorter time to form than we previously thought. According to an analysis in February…

Spiral galaxies look nice and tidy, with most of their stars and gas confined to a disc neatly arranged in swirling spiral arms. But there’s a lot more to a…

It’s been busily orbiting and observing Jupiter and its moons for four years now, but the scientific spacecraft Juno still has some surprises to share. For the first time, it…

The United States accused Russia on Thursday of test-firing an anti-satellite weapon in space, warning that the threat against Washington’s systems was “real, serious and increasing.” US Space Command “has…

China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take their rivalry into deep space. The two countries are taking…

When we peer out into intergalactic space, evidence for dark matter is everywhere. It’s in the rotation of galaxies, which cannot be accounted for by observable matter alone. It’s in…

The answers to many questions in astronomy are hidden behind the veil of deep time. One of those questions is around the role that supernovae played in the early Universe.…

Just over 300 light-years away is a star that’s a lot like a very young version of our Sun, with multiple exoplanets orbiting it. That’s an interesting find in itself.…

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than 4 million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars. The efforts of hundreds…

The planet Venus is scorching hot beneath its suffocatingly thick atmosphere, much of its surface shaped by the surges and flows of volcanic activity. Nevertheless, planetary geologists have been unable…

Comet NEOWISE – a glowing ball of space ice with two colourful tails – has starred in countless photos as it streaks through the skies across the Northern Hemisphere this…

The first Arab space mission to Mars blasted off Monday aboard a rocket from Japan, after weather delays set back the launch of the probe dubbed ‘Hope’. A live feed…

As exciting and thrilling as it is to watch all the historic footage from the Apollo Moon landings, you have to admit, the quality is sometimes not all that great.…

Ever wondered what space smells like? Well, according to those that have been, it’s a bit burned, a little like gunpowder, has some rum notes, and, if you’re astronaut Tony…

When magma comes out of the Earth onto the surface, it flows as lava. Those lava flows are fascinating to watch, and they leave behind some unique landforms and rocks.…

Every now and again, some dead stars called pulsars do something quite odd. They sort of hiccup, making an abrupt acceleration in their rotation speed before – usually – gradually…

If we’re going to get serious about long-term space voyages, then being able to patch up injuries will be essential – and that’s no longer a far-off concept. A cosmonaut…

Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it…

Black holes don’t glow – in fact, they’re famous for doing the opposite. But if they’re actively devouring material from the space around them, that material can blaze like a…

A telescope rocketing around the Sun just beamed back the closest images and videos ever recorded of our star, but it’s just getting started on its mission. The Solar Orbiter,…

A star discovered hurtling across the Milky Way is so bizarre that astronomers can only conclude it was ejected during a very unusual supernova event. The star – a white…

A faint and ghostly galaxy 10 million light-years away has delivered one of the holy grails of black hole astronomy. At its heart, lies a black hole that looks to…

A red dwarf in our Sun’s own back yard seems to have a bad case of indigestion, belching out a flare roughly 20 times more impressive than anything known to…

In the darkness of orbital night on July 5, a NASA astronaut floated up to a window on the International Space Station, gazed toward the limb of Earth, and patiently…

Looking back through several billion years of history isn’t easy, and new discoveries continually prompt us to rethink just how the Moon came to be. Now, a new study suggests…

The Universe isn’t just a random scattering of galaxies sprinkled throughout an expanding void. The closer we look, the more we see that there are structures – some of which…

The United Arab Emirates is about to launch its first mission to Mars. It will be the Arab world’s first flight to another planet. The SUV-sized spacecraft, called the Hope…

By this time next year, Mars will be abuzz with robotic activity. That’s because three countries are sending spacecraft to the red planet this month. In the final weeks of…

A comet-eating black hole the size of a planet? It’s possible. And if there’s one out there in the distant Solar System, a pair of researchers think they know how…