Lunar samples serve as a critical link between orbital remote sensing and ground-truth measurements. Previous sample-return missions—Apollo, Luna, and Chang’e-5—have collectively brought back approximately 383 kilograms of lunar soil and rock from the moon’s near side, advancing the understanding of lunar geological evolution and regolith properties. However, the absence of samples from the far side […]

Some 200 light years from Earth, the core of a dead star is circling a larger star in a macabre cosmic dance. The dead star is a type of white dwarf that exerts a powerful magnetic field as it pulls material from the larger star into a swirling, accreting disk.

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An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new dusty star-forming galaxy at high redshift. The newfound galaxy, designated AC-2168, was detected using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA). The finding was detailed in a paper published Nov. 11 on the pre-print server arXiv.

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NASA unveiled close-up pictures on Wednesday of the interstellar comet that’s making a quick one-and-done tour of the solar system.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding beyond the next in precisely the same pattern. (The fourth is almost transparent, at the edges of Webb’s image.)

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Researchers from HSE University and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences analyzed seven years of data from the ERG (Arase) satellite and, for the first time, provided a detailed description of a new type of radio emission from near-Earth space—the hectometric continuum, first discovered in 2017.

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A machine learning framework can distinguish molecules made by biological processes from those formed through non-biological processes and could be used to analyze samples returned by current and future planetary missions. The findings are published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

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At this point in history, astronomers and engineers who grew up watching “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon,” two movies about the destructive power of asteroid impacts, are likely in relatively high ranking positions at space agencies. “Don’t Look Up” also provided a more modern, though more pessimistic (or, unfortunately, realistic?), look at what might potentially happen […]