We are surrounded by alien worlds. In neighbouring star systems, Earth-like planets abound, with unusual names like Proxima b, TRAPPIST–1e, Ross–128b, and LHS–1140b. Are these strange places habitable? Are they homes for life-forms we can’t yet imagine? The jury is out. While these exoplanets all orbit within the so-called habitable aka Goldilocks zones of their

The Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons wrapped up in 2017, when the spacecraft was sent plunging into the gas giant to meet its end. But there’s still a lot of data from the mission to keep scientists busy. A team of scientists working with Cassini data have made a surprising discovery: Titan’s methane-filled

A test of the emergency escape system for SpaceX’s new spacecraft designed to carry NASA astronauts into orbit went awry on Saturday, and an unverified video making the rounds on Twitter claims to show just how bad the anomaly was. On Saturday afternoon, SpaceX attempted a static-fire test of the emergency abort system on its

NASA’s new planet-hunting telescope, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), just found its first Earth-sized world. Though the Earth-sized planet, and its hot sub-Neptune companion, were first observed by TESS in January 2019, it’s taken until now to confirm their status with ground-based follow-up observations. The discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. When TESS was

Beresheet, the unlikely lander built with donations to a non-profit group, crashed into the Moon. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a historic accomplishment in its own way. Now SpaceIL, the non-profit behind Beresheet, wants to send another lander to the Moon. The Beresheet lander crashed into the Moon last week, on its final descent.

On 22 March 2015, NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory recorded a blip in its data. Not far from the southern constellation of Fornax, something brightened, then slowly faded away. Thanks to a new technique, now we know that blip was two neutron stars colliding, 6.6 billion light-years from Earth. We also know that when neutron stars

There’s a trick to night-time photography: longer exposures. They soak up more light, making everything pop brilliantly in your shot, provided your camera stays really, really still. Of course, most of the time, we’re still only talking extra seconds of exposure time, maybe minutes. Okay, in rare cases, hours. But a team of amateur astronomer

After decades of searching, scientists have finally detected in space the first molecular bond that would have formed in the early Universe after the Big Bang. The unambiguous discovery of the helium hydride ion HeH+ in the planetary nebula NGC 7027 brings to a close an epic hunt to locate the elusive molecule in outer

It was unprecedented. In 2017, astronomers discovered the first known interstellar object in our Solar System: ‘Oumuamua, a mysterious cigar-shaped enigma, identified as our first visitor from outer, outer space. But just because ‘Oumuamua was the first detected interstellar object, doesn’t mean it was the first ever. Just five years ago, in fact, Earth’s atmosphere

As Earth makes its annual passage through the tail of comet C/1861 G1, or Thatcher, we’re treated to the spectacular sight of meteors burning up in the atmosphere. This is the Lyrid meteor shower, and it comes around every April. This year, the lovely team at the Giant Magellan Telescope has put together a beautiful

The road to reusable space rockets was always going to be a bumpy one, such are the technical challenges involved. SpaceX has been making excellent progress, but just had its latest bump – having its central Falcon Heavy booster fall over in choppy seas off the coast of Florida. The booster rocket had successfully touched

Meteorites are a bit like fruitcake – chunks of mineral held together by a stone matrix. Those mineral inclusions can contain some pretty fascinating glimpses into the stuff of the Solar System – but now scientists have found something they’ve never seen before. In a meteorite recovered from Antarctica in 2002 is a tiny, ancient

In August of 2016, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced the discovery of an exoplanet in the neighboring system of Proxima Centauri. The news was greeted with considerable excitement, as this was the closest rocky planet to our Solar System that also orbited within its star’s habitable zone. Since then, multiple studies have

We think of the Moon as a dry and dusty sort of place, but over the years, scientists have learnt that Earth’s satellite is actually rather loaded with water – in volcanic deposits, in its chilly poles, in the permanent shadows of its craters. But it looks like water has also been hiding somewhere else,

Less than a week ago, the world was blown away by the first-ever direct image of a black hole‘s event horizon. But this now world-famous object doesn’t really have an official name, although a few options are now vying for legitimacy. The galaxy that contains this supermassive black hole is called NGC 4486 or Messier

This week, we took the first ever direct image of a black hole’s event horizon. It was a huge, science-altering event that didn’t disappoint, with the image confirming Einstein’s theory of relativity.  And it’s even crazier when you put the sheer size of the M87 black hole into perspective.  If that’s not enough to crush

The first picture of a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy shows how we have, in a sense, observed the invisible. The ghostly image is a radio intensity map of the glowing plasma behind, and therefore silhouetting, the black hole’s “event horizon” – the spherical cloak of invisibility around a black hole

Nearly two months after its launch with a SpaceX rocket, the first private mission ever to try landing on the Moon has ended in failure. The dishwasher-size robot, called Beresheet (a biblical reference that means “in the beginning”), attempted the first private Moon landing on Thursday shortly after 3 pm EDT (19:00 UTC). The roughly

Not so long ago, Mars had a bunch of methane in its atmosphere. And then it didn’t. Either a whole lot of research is just plain wrong, or we have one heck of a mystery on our hands. Coincidentally, while one group of researchers double checked their sums, other researchers have stumbled on results that

For a year, between March 2015 and March 2016, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent his life in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station, hundreds of kilometres above Earth. His identical twin and fellow astronaut, Mark, stayed down here. This was a unique opportunity. The Kelly brothers are genetically identical, which meant scientists had

By now, we’ve all seen the history-making snapshot of the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy M87 staring back at us like the flaming eye of a vengeful god. It’s a powerful image. Makes you feel tiny. Really tiny. Not feeling it? Maybe you just need to comprehend the scale of this thing.

Black holes are long-time superstars of science fiction. But their Hollywood fame is a little strange, given that no-one has ever actually seen one – at least, until now. If you needed to see to believe, then thank the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which has just produced the first ever direct image of a black

No. Stop. Scroll back up. Look at that picture. Stop scrolling down and look again. What you’re looking at is history. That is the very first direct image, ever, of the event horizon of a black hole. It’s 55 million light-years away, and it’s the supermassive black hole at the centre of a giant elliptical

Since 2006, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) consortium has been working on producing the world’s first-ever photographs of the event horizon of a black hole. Now they’re just about to present their first result, described as “groundbreaking” by the European Research Council, and we are beyond excited! Our live blog coverage starts below, and you

The European Southern Observatory has revealed that on April 10 there will be a huge announcement. Yes, we know how that sounds – but as far as we can tell, it appears the world is about to finally see the first ever photo of a black hole‘s event horizon. Of course, we won’t know for

In 1996, over 20 years ago, then US President Bill Clinton made a short speech on what was, at the time, a monumental discovery: one that would someday launch a whole new field of science, called astrobiology. Embedded in a Martian meteorite, NASA scientists had that day said there could be evidence of a possible sign

For the last twenty-some years, the International Space Station (ISS) has seen hundreds of astronauts come and go. Yet even after all these years, a little part of each visitor remains, like a signature in the station’s guest book. The most extensive microbial inventory to date has now found an astonishing diversity of germs on

Later this week, we may be seeing our very first photographs of a black hole’s event horizon. But other projects are also hard at work – astronomers have just managed to take the first-ever direct image of the dusty torus surrounding a very active supermassive black hole. Some galaxies – aptly called radio galaxies - contain highly

It’s one of the most enduring mysteries of the Sun: why the superheated surface of this great ball of glowing plasma is actually cooler than its outer atmosphere, called the corona. Scientists now have a new explanation for this hotly debated topic, and the answer was hidden in a strange solar phenomenon that’s never been

Two successful rocket launches in Norway on Friday have left locals stunned, confused, and in awe of an incredible artificial light show. After two orange dots launched through the air, expanding glowing clouds and colourful lights appeared suddenly – but it was not an alien attack, as some outlets have been suggesting. Instead, the rockets were

It looks like another space rock has exploded over Russia. At around 7 pm local time on April 6, a meteor turned into a fireball over the industrial town of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, according to The Siberian Times. Residents caught the event on dashcams as the meteor streaked across the sky – an orange fireball

Japan’s space agency said it successfully dropped a small bomb on an asteroid on Friday as part of its mission to better understand the history of the Solar System. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said its Hayabusa2 spacecraft detonated the copper explosive, also known as the Small Carry-on Inspector (SCI), on the Ryugu asteroid

Just because the Mars rovers are all the way over on the Red Planet, that doesn’t mean they don’t get to enjoy a bit of eclipse fun. And with two moons on rapid orbits, Mars sees a lot of eclipses. Now NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent home videos of Martian moons Phobos and Deimos (Fear

Only four men alive today have walked on the Moon. Last month, three of them got together in the same room. NASA’s Apollo program ran 17 missions, which are best known for putting the first people on the Moon in 1969. Humanity hasn’t set foot on the Moon since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in December

Welcome to Saturn, as you’ve probably never seen it. It’s always awe-inspiring to see the clockwork motion of the heavens, transpire in real time. In a slow motion Universe, occultations give us the chance to see the cosmos pull off a celestial hat-trick. This can appear as a split second-type of event – such as

The year 2019 is here. With it, we’ve been promised a splendid moment in astronomy. For years, the Event Horizon Telescope has been working to bring us the first ever telescopic photograph of the event horizon of a black hole. Indeed, for all their popularity in public imagination, we have never actually seen a black

This is what will happen when our Sun dies: First, the hydrogen-powered nuclear reactor in its center will run out of fuel. The Sun will expand into a red giant, swelling to 100 times its size and swallowing Mercury, Venus and perhaps even our own planet, along with all life as we know it. Next,

It’s the big mystery: Intelligent life should be out there in the Universe, so why haven’t we found any evidence for it? This question is called the Fermi paradox, and there are a few potential answers. But this one image (below) just really brings it home. Space is super, duper big, and humanity’s reach into

We still don’t know what dark matter is, but we can strike a line through one option. It is not, as per a theory proposed by the brilliant Stephen Hawking, a bunch of teeny-tiny microscopic black holes. In the most rigorous test of the theory to date, an international team led by researchers from the Kavli

In the halo of the Milky Way, a tiny, ancient star called J0023+0307 drifts about, minding its business. It’s very old indeed, which isn’t uncommon for stars in the halo – but it contains no detectable carbon, which is pretty danged weird. So weird that the astronomy team who found it even said the star

The head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, is not happy with how other world leaders are treating space. Speaking at a recent Town Hall, the space agency’s highest ranking official admonished the Indian government for shooting down a satellite in low orbit, calling the test “unacceptable”. “That is a terrible, terrible thing to create an event

NASA’s new planet-hunting space telescope TESS may be primarily searching for alien worlds, but it’s certainly not the only thing the shiny beast can do. She hasn’t even been up there a year yet – and now astronomers have detected the first exocomet in TESS’s data. What’s more, the detection was made in a star’s

We tend to think of stars as the objects that make most of the light in the Universe, while planets, moons, rocks, dust and gas reflect this starlight. But it turns out that stars reflect light, too. We haven’t really noticed this phenomenon before, because the amount of reflected light is minuscule compared to the

The European Southern Observatory has just revealed there will be a huge announcement next week. Yes, we know how that sounds – but as far as we can tell, it appears the world is about to finally see the first ever photo of a black hole‘s event horizon. Of course, we won’t know for sure

There was a big stir when reports emerged that the Curiosity rover had detected methane on Mars. But there was a problem: it could not be ruled out that its sensors were wiggy, or something was misinterpreted. Now it seems we can put that concern to rest – because an independent source has also detected

Remember that time astronomers discovered a galaxy with no dark matter? Well, they’re back. They’ve found a second one, and it actually bolsters the case for dark matter‘s existence. As the second galaxy astronomers have found without any dark matter, the new finding – named NGC 1052-DF4 (DF4 for short) – confirms that the first discovery,

The design for SpaceX’s Starship (aka. Big Falcon Rocket) is really starting to come together! Over the holidays, sections of the Starship Hopper (a miniature version of the Starship) were photographed being put together at the company’s South Texas Launch Site. By mid-January, the parts were fully-integrated, forming the body of the stainless-steel prototype that

In space, no one can hear an asteroid scream. But astronomers just used the Hubble telescope to see one destroying itself. A 2.5-mile-wide (4 kilometer wide) asteroid called 6478 Gault was first discovered in 1988, and it seemed like many of the other 800,000 known space rocks. But in January, astronomers saw something strange in