Space

When NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) arrived in orbit around the Moon in 2009, scientists immediately started firing lasers at it. More specifically, they were firing lasers at a small reflector array roughly the size of a paperback book, trying to bounce light back to Earth. And after almost 10 years, they have finally succeeded.

The dwarf planet Ceres was once assumed to be a fairly primitive chunk of rock. But just a few years ago, NASA’s space probe Dawn revealed that there’s more to this asteroid belt body than meets the eye. Now, we’re starting to find out just how much more. Ceres sits in the asteroid belt between Mars

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is a pretty special chunk of rock. It’s the largest and most massive moon in the Solar System. It’s the only Solar System moon that generates its own magnetic field. It has the most liquid water of any Solar System body. And now, scientists have discovered, it may have the largest impact

There are countless exoplanets in the Milky Way, but some are more hardcore than others. Take a type known as hot super-Earths. These planets are nuts. Imagine a rocky world like Earth, but up to 10 times more massive; now zoom it in so close to its star, it takes just 10 days or fewer

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 30 July, carrying a host of cutting-edge technology including high-definition video equipment and the first interplanetary helicopter. Many of the tools are designed as experimental steps toward human exploration of the red planet. Crucially, Perseverance is equipped with a device called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or

After a two-month gap, SpaceX has resumed launching batches of dozens of satellites in its gambit to blanket Earth with high-speed internet access. The satellites are a new “VisorSat” variety to make them less shiny to the ground and especially to astronomers’ telescopes. But researchers say the spacecraft’s experimental new feature, while helpful, won’t fully

When the Sun sets in a blaze of blue and night falls over the dusty plains of Mars, something weird and wonderful occurs. High up above the surface, the atmosphere begins to glow with an ultraviolet light, sometimes pulsing, as nitrogen and oxygen combine into nitric oxide. This invisible glow, first revealed by the Mars

Up to half the calcium in the Universe – and that includes our bones and teeth – is thought to come from exploding supernova stars, and researchers have now been able to get unprecedented insight at how these ultra-rare, calcium-rich supernovae reach the end of their lives. The never-before-seen look at how these stellar explosions

Deep in the thick, poisonous clouds wrapped around Venus, the atmosphere is behaving very oddly. A giant, previously unknown planet-scale wall of cloud travels westward around the planet every 4.9 days – and apparently has been doing so since at least 1983. It can extend up to 7,500 kilometres (4,660 miles) long, stretching across the

SpaceX on Tuesday successfully completed a flight of less than a minute of the largest prototype ever tested of the future rocket Starship, which the company hopes to use one day to colonize Mars. “Mars is looking real,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in response to a fan. The current Starship prototype is fairly crude:

In recent decades, over 4,000 extrasolar planets have been confirmed beyond our Solar System. With so many planets available for study, astronomers have learned a great deal about the types of planets that exist out there and what kind of conditions are prevalent. For instance, they have been able to get a better idea of just how

The hunt for exoplanets in our galaxy is a deeply important endeavour. The more exoplanets we find, the better we can understand our own Solar System – and how life emerges in the Universe. To date, over 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed – but a new discovery could widen the search, helping us to find

The Sun is a wild place. Up in our skies, it appears pretty much the same day to day, but when you look closer, our star is often riotous with turbulent plasma. One of the wildest things the Sun can do is flare – belch out colossal loops of plasma that utterly dwarf our entire

In February 1987, the sky lit up. In the Large Magellanic Cloud, 167,644 light-years away, astronomers watched as a massive star died in a spectacular supernova, the closest to Earth in hundreds of years. But when the fireworks died down, something was missing. There was no sign of the neutron star that should have been

The question of whether ancient life could have existed on Mars centres on the water that once flowed there, but new research published Monday suggests that many of the Red Planet’s valleys were gouged by icy glaciers not rivers.  The study in Nature Geoscience, which comes amid a flurry of new Mars missions trying to

It’s easy to think of black holes as voracious destruction machines, slurping up everything in their immediate vicinity. But that’s not always the case. The environments around active supermassive black holes are complex, and last year, a team of astronomers showed that there’s a safe zone around each supermassive black hole in which thousands of

A dead star 14,350 light-years away has just become the most important clue in solving the mystery of fast radio bursts. Earlier this year, it spat out a colossal, milliseconds-long radio flare – and now the first published analysis of the event notes its similarity to the enigmatic extragalactic signals. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are

SpaceX just achieved an historic feat that even its CEO, Elon Musk, thought improbable when he founded the rocket company in 2002: flying people to and from space. On Sunday afternoon, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely careened back to Earth after a 27-million-mile mission in orbit around the planet. The men rode SpaceX’s new

No matter where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home. And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space. The latest image of the Terran System comes from China’s Mars mission, Tianwen-1, which launched on July 23. It captured an image of

After travelling more than 27 million miles around planet Earth, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are headed home inside SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spaceship. Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, the two-man crew undocked their ship from the International Space Station Saturday evening, beginning the return of the first

The Crew Dragon spacecraft, produced by private company SpaceX, is scheduled to return from the International Space Station (ISS) and splash down in the Atlantic ocean on August 2. Contingent on a favourable weather forecast and a successful final week at the ISS, NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will begin the undocking procedure

Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, NASA and SpaceX are “go” to return the first commercial astronauts to planet Earth this weekend. SpaceX made history in May when it became the first company to launch a crewed spaceship to the International Space Station. In doing so, Elon Musk‘s rocket company also revived the

Exoplanets have been a particularly hot topic of late. More than 4,000 of them have been discovered since the first in 1995. Now one more can potentially be added to the list. This one is orbiting Gliese 3470, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Cancer. What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that this planet

Every good story deserves a sequel – and the strange white cloud spotted above an extinct Martian volcano back in 2018 just got one, because the stunning fog trail has made another appearance. In fact, this is the latest instalment in a long-running series, and this time scientists were looking out expectantly for the event.

Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that they remained as little more than collections of rocks, or “rubble piles”. But one

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who made spaceflight history on May 30 by becoming the first people to launch to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle, might see their weekend homecoming plans thrown to the wind. After docking SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour ship to the International Space Station and spending two months there, the men are preparing to

Away from the glare of civilisation’s blinding lights, an unimpeded view of the night sky makes you feel like you’re standing on the shores of eternity. But there is one place on Earth where the sights stretch just that little bit further than anywhere else. Researchers have measured the clarity of the stars at a

Mars 2020, the spaceship carrying NASA’s new rover Perseverance to the Red Planet, experienced technical difficulties and was temporarily running on essential systems only, the agency said Thursday. “Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars

A rocket carrying NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover yet has launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, though its crucial journey through space is just beginning. The Perseverance rover and its landing apparatus is packed inside the top of a 197-foot Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Thursday morning. At 7:50 am ET, the rocket’s boosters fired and

On Thursday morning, NASA will launch its fifth Mars rover: A robotic scientist the size of an SUV. The $US2.4 billion, nuclear-powered vehicle, named Perseverance (“Percy” for short) is designed to trundle along the Martian surface, mine for signs of ancient life, capture high-quality video and audio, and collect rock and soil samples for an eventual return

Not all ice ages are equally brutal. In the most extreme glaciation events known to science, ice stretches out from Earth’s polar regions and extends all the way into lower latitudes, literally reshaping the face of the planet. Evidence for such epic transitions can be found in the geologic record, most recently in formidable glaciations

For the first time, scientists have observed that ‘megaripples’ on Mars – huge sand waves seen on the Martian surface – are moving structures, and not ancient relics stuck in place since the Red Planet’s distant past. Megaripples, which also occur in deserts on Earth, are generally larger than smaller sand ripples, and are composed

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 al Uhaymir 008 (or SaU 008) will hitch a ride on the 2020 NASA Perseverance rover mission on Thursday – some 600,000 years after it

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 readiness review is complete, and we are indeed go for launch,” administrator Jim Bridenstine said. “We are in extraordinary times right now with the coronavirus

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 the demise of these ancient, spent stars. Researchers became aware of this unusual supernova – called SN2019yvq – last December, only a day after the

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 a handful of far-travelling comets. But that’s not the whole story. “Instead, everything orbits the Solar System centre of mass,” James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist

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 years, but it’s not done taking incredible photos of our cosmic backyard yet. For example, earlier this month, Hubble flexed its Solar System chops, and

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 the rover on Mars’s surface by early next year. Similarly, the launch of the Emirates Mars Mission last Sunday marked the Arab world’s foray into interplanetary

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 2020, there’s evidence that most of Earth took just 5 million years to come together – several times shorter than current models suggest. This revision

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 galaxy than what we can see, as a new image of invisible phenomena adroitly demonstrates. The image shows a galaxy called NGC 4217, around 67

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 has imaged the north pole of one of the oddest objects in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. There, the constant rain of plasma from

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 evidence” that Moscow “conducted a non-destructive test of a space-based anti-satellite weapon” on July 15, it said in a statement. “Last week’s test is another

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 advantage of a period when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a short journey, with the US spacecraft due to lift off on July

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 way galaxies cluster together, and the path of light as it travels through the Universe. We can’t see dark matter directly, but the effects

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. It was the job of early supernovae to forge the heavier elements that were not forged in the Big Bang. How did that process play out?

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. But what makes the system truly dazzling is that it just became the first of its kind to be directly imaged, planets and all. On

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 of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the Universe”, said Will Percival of the University of

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 to find hard evidence that the planet remains volcanically active. Well, we just got some of the best evidence yet. Venus has plenty of volcanic