For the past two years, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has sailed across the solar system by the light of the stars. Like ancient mariners and the Apollo astronauts, it needed the constancy of the constellations to navigate the dark unknown. All that changed Monday, when the NASA probe finally reached its target, an Empire State Building-size

The Intentional Space Station can be a fabulous place of learning and wonder. But to get to that wonder, there’s always some troubleshooting to be done – and that work falls to the astronauts crewing the ISS missions. Take this recent footage of astronauts grappling with CIMON – a floating robot head similar to Siri

A former NASA astronaut says the agency he used to work for has a duty to protect civilians from killer asteroids, but that it isn’t meeting that obligation. The threat of asteroid strikes might seem as abstract as outer space itself. But the risk, while infrequent, is real – and potentially more deadly than the

Astronomers have been able to get their closest, most detailed look yet at the first stages of a dying star – a supernova known as SN 2018oh – using a combination of super-powerful telescopes out in space and based here on Earth. This unprecedented look at the death throes of SN 2018oh (also labelled ASASSN-18bt), around

We need to talk about the dark ages. No, not those dark ages after the fall of the western Roman Empire. The cosmological dark ages. The time in our Universe, billions of years ago, before the formation of the first stars. And we need to talk about the cosmic dawn: the birth of those first

NASA’s next lunar science experiments will arrive at the Moon via a spacecraft built by one of nine private companies – a first for one of the agency’s science missions. In an announcement Thursday, the space agency named the organizations that are now eligible to bid on delivering science and technology payloads to the lunar

Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly how much light has been produced by all the stars in the Universe, over all the time that has passed? Well, now you can wonder no more. An international team of astronomers has actually calculated the amount of starlight in the cosmos. And it’s teaching us new things

Just as moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, and stars orbit galactic cores, galaxies can be orbited by other, much smaller galaxies. The Milky Way has several of these hangers-on, most notably the Large and Small Magellanic clouds, the only two of our galaxy’s satellites visible to the naked eye. Now, thanks to Gaia data

At the heart of our galaxy, the core around which everything in the Milky Way orbits, lies the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Without the gravitationally binding force of Sgr A*, the Milky Way wouldn’t exist – yet, although it’s only 25,640 light-years away, we’ve never seen it. We’ll never actually see a black hole,

A six-month-long journey that could shape the future of humanity reached its nail-biting conclusion today. On May 5th, NASA launched its InSight Mars lander from California’s Vanderberg Air Force Base. On Monday afternoon, following “seven minutes of terror,” the craft reached its final destination – Elysium Planitia, a flat plain near the Red Planet’s equator

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said there’s a “70 per cent chance” he’ll personally travel to Mars. Musk, 47, told Axios’ new program on HBO that he believes Mars exploration is more than just a fantasy dreamed up by the super-wealthy who may want to use space travel as an “escape hatch”. “Your probability of dying

Six months after blasting off from Earth, NASA’s InSight lander is minutes away from touching down on the surface of Mars. This plucky little robot is about to streak into the Martian atmosphere at 19,310 km/h (12,000 mph) before making its delicate and complicated landing – known as the ‘seven minutes of terror’. But don’t

It’s the mother of all conspiracy theories: the unflinching belief that the 1969 Moon landing never actually happened. Proponents of this seemingly unshakeable conviction argue that what the masses perceived as a groundbreaking scientific achievement was in fact an elaborate fake: a hoax perpetrated by NASA and the US government on the American (and international)

An uninvited guest has been caught hitching a ride on the International Space Station, and it’s a worrying one. JPL-NASA Scientists have identified strains of Enterobacter collected from the space station’s toilet and exercise area. If you’ve heard of the genus before, it’s probably in relation to hospitals. Some Enterobacter strains can infect immunocompromised patients

If you aren’t nervous for NASA’s InSight Mars probe, you probably should be. Getting a rocket ride to the red planet is the easy part. It’s touching down on Mars that aerospace engineers consider to be one of the greatest challenges in the solar system; in fact, about a third of missions successfully launched to

NASA has made a commitment to send humans to Mars by the 2030s. This is an ambitious goal when you think that a typical round trip will anywhere between three and six months and crews will be expected to stay on the red planet for up to two years before planetary alignment allows for the

Back in the 1970s, NASA’s Mariner and Viking Missions were sent out to explore other planets in our Solar System. All three of them (there were two Viking missions) captured images of Mars’ moon Phobos during their travels. They were our first images of the tiny, potato-shaped moon, and the images held a mystery: strange

Gathering detailed information on exoplanets is extremely difficult. The light from their host star overwhelms the light from the exoplanet, making it difficult for telescopes to see them. But now a team using cutting-edge technology at the Keck Observatory has taken a big leap in exoplanet observation and has detected water in the atmosphere of a planet

A new study suggests that Earth might have once had a different kind of magnetic field – one generated by oceans of magma on its surface, instead of the rotation of its core. And that’s good news, because it means more exoplanets than we thought could have a protective magnetic shield sheltering them from the

We’ve arrived at a sad realisation. A handful of pixels in about 90 percent of the images taken by one of the major instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are showing things that just aren’t there. Researchers uncovered the error after searching for better signs of moisture-absorbing materials on the Martian surface. Not only did

If life is to spark in the Universe like it does on Earth, a few things seem to be required, such as an atmosphere, ozone layer, liquid water, and habitable temperatures. But before it ever gets to that point – before planets even form – space itself needs to be primed, courtesy of ultraviolet and

Between Earth and the galactic core, there’s an old, faint star that appears to have something orbiting it, something that’s confusing astronomers. The discovery joins several other stellar objects that have perplexed researchers in recent years, inviting suggestions as mundane as dust and as imaginative as extra-terrestrial technology. Whatever is responsible, it helps to have

On Monday a little spacecraft is going to land on Mars and begin exploring the Red Planet in a way we never have before. If everything goes to plan (which it doesn’t always) a little robot called InSight will be helping us understand the inside of Mars. But sometimes these sorts of missions are difficult to

NASA has ordered a safety review of the two companies it has hired to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a months-long assessment that would involve hundreds of interviews designed to evaluate the culture of the workplaces, the agency said. The review, to begin next year, would look at both Boeing and SpaceX, the

It’s thought that somewhere out there, the Sun has a twin – born not just in the same stellar nursery, but an almost identical twin, a binary companion made of the same star-stuff. And astronomers think they might have just found it. Located roughly 184 light-years away, it’s called HD 186302, and it’s almost certainly

In a search for ancient life on Mars, NASA will send its next rover to explore Jezero Crater – the site of a former delta and lake. The rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020, is equipped with a drilling system that can collect and store rock samples that contain clues to Mars’s ancient

Bill Nye thinks you’d have to be on drugs to believe Mars could ever be habitable for humans. “This whole idea of terraforming Mars, as respectful as I can be, are you guys high?” the science educator asked in an interview with USA TODAY. “We can’t even take care of this planet where we live,

Eight thousand light-years from Earth, just below Scorpio, there’s a cosmic serpent that’s been hiding a secret sting in its tail. In a sinuous curl of glowing dust, astronomers have discovered a binary star system unlike any other in the Milky Way. It’s a pair of rare, old, and unstable stars right on the brink

If you’re an alien far, far away inside the globular star cluster M13, one day you might receive a radio message from Earth written in binary code. Decoding it would give you a beautiful 8-bit style picture of some basic human information – including the structure of DNA, a graphic of our Solar System and

The architectural design behind Japan’s new space research center is mind-boggling. The futuristic building will incorporate elements of spacecraft design, which emphasize light weight and high functionality. The whole thing will be suspended over a man-made, Moon-like crater. The building will be a robotics research center that’s part of the Avatar X space research campus on

We can’t see it with our naked eyes, but deep in the far reaches of the Universe is a galaxy that’s absolutely blasting out radiation. It’s called W2246-0526, and it’s emitting as much infrared radiation as 350 trillion Suns, making it the most luminous galaxy we’ve ever observed. What’s its secret? Well, we’re not entirely

Every now and then, Earth’s protective magnetic cage changes its stripes, sending explosive showers of charged particles spilling into the atmosphere. NASA’s quartet of orbiting Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) satellites has finally recorded one in high detail on the planet’s night side, providing vital information on a phenomenon that stirs the winds of space throughout the

Astronomers have found a telltale sign that something is tugging at the movements of Barnard’s star – so it looks like we could soon be adding a planetary neighbour to the local directory of our corner of the Milky Way. Barnard’s star is a red dwarf that was already hanging out in space before our

We have comets and asteroids to thank for Earth’s water, according to the most widely-held theory among scientists. But it’s not that cut-and-dried. It’s still a bit of a mystery, and a new study suggests that not all of Earth’s water was delivered to our planet that way. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in

Humans have a hard-wired habit of seeing patterns, shapes, and faces in all kinds of objects. For some these phenomena are conspiracy fuel, but it’s really just our brains trying to make sense of the world. Case in point, the Mars Warrior Women, the Mars Face, or any half decent optical illusion. This time, however, we’ve gone a little

If astronomers’ calculations are correct, the Solar System is right in the middle of a turbulent space event: a vast ‘hurricane’ of dark matter, blowing at an insane speed of 500 kilometres per second (310 mps). We can’t see it, and we can’t feel it – but it could mean that a direct detection of

Polish astronomers just discovered two new planets in our galaxy. That’s cool news on its own, but these planets are different from most. Unlike almost all known planets, New Scientist reports, these two planets don’t orbit a star. Instead, they drift aimlessly through the cold, dead void of space — and presumably spend their time

An extraordinary account of the impact space weather had on military operations in Vietnam in 1972 was found buried in the US Navy archives, according to a newly published article in Space Weather. On August 4, 1972, the crew of a US Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off

According to some alarming tabloid headlines, three giant asteroids are skimming by Earth this weekend – one as long as a blue whale! Here’s what’s really going on: there are a number of asteroids about to zip through Earth’s general neighbourhood, according to a NASA asteroid watch website. But we’re not in any danger whatsoever

The sky above Earth is never completely dark. Even at night a soft glow emanates from the rim of the upper atmosphere. It’s always there, right above us, but it’s tricky to see from Earth. Lucky for us, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has captured the spectacular effect from space. The photograph

Black holes, while fascinating, are hardly a new discovery – but a black hole spinning at one of the highest speeds ever, according to the Hindustan Times, is a completely different story – especially when there have only ever been four others like it. In 2016, India’s first dedicated astronomy satellite, the AstroSat, spotted a

Roughly one billion light-years from Earth, a giant elliptical galaxy has been found to be an enthusiastic recycler – albeit not of plastic bottles. The supermassive black hole at its core is blasting cold molecular gas, which is then falling into the black hole, and feeding the cycle anew. Such a phenomenon is known as

You step off the plane, having travelled across the world to the opposite hemisphere. The seasons are all backwards, and when you look up at the full Moon, you realise it’s not even the right way up! Not only is this incredibly weird (mostly because, how did we not realise this before?), but this curious

The first components of the International Space Station (ISS) launched into space more than 20 years ago, and it’s been continuously occupied for 18. Right now, it’s the only operational space station in orbit – but that’s about to change. China just unveiled a life-size replica of the core module of the country’s new space

It’s a big Universe, that’s for sure, which means we might not necessarily cross paths with any other lifeforms that might be out there. But if we want to attract the attention of any galactic neighbours, apparently we could use laser technology we already have right now. Today’s lasers could be repurposed to act as

Earth is too big to fit into an X-ray or MRI scanner, so a group of physicists in Spain found a fascinating new way to peer inside - they used the subatomic particles constantly streaming through the planet. The team scanned the interior of Earth using neutrinos – and even used them to conduct an entirely

Any species reaching for the stars is bound to have its fingertips singed. Probably more than once. One of NASA’s latest posts on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website is an iconic reminder of the mishaps in our spacefaring history. “A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked

Hanging about in space can do pretty strange things to the human body, which is poorly adapted to life without gravity. It can create a slew of health problems, keeping clean is a huge hassle, and doing a wee is majorly awkward. But is it true, as a Snapple cap asserts, that you can’t burp?