China routinely sends astronauts to and from its space station Tiangong. A crew capsule is about to undock from the station and return to Earth, but there’s nothing routine about its journey home.

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High up in Earth’s orbit, millions of human-made objects large and small are flying at speeds of over 15,000 miles per hour. The objects, which range from inactive satellites to fragments of equipment resulting from explosions or collisions of previously launched rockets, are space debris, colloquially referred to as space junk. Sometimes the objects collide […]

Like a toddler right before naptime, TRAPPIST-1 is a small yet moody star. This little star, which sits in the constellation Aquarius about 40 light-years from Earth, spits out bursts of energy known as “flares” about six times a day.

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Of the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, one planet in particular has attracted the attention of scientists. This planet orbits the star within the “Goldilocks zone”—a distance where water on its surface is theoretically possible, but only if the planet has an atmosphere. And where there is water, there might be […]

Searching for technosignatures—signs of technology on a planet that we can see from afar—remains a difficult task. There are so many different factors to consider, and we only have the technological capabilities to detect a relatively small collection of them.

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MPE Director and Nobel Laureate Reinhard Genzel is spearheading an open letter signed by nearly 30 eminent international astronomers urging the Chilean government to relocate the proposed INNA industrial complex. The project threatens the world-renowned dark skies over ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the premier site for cutting-edge astronomical research.

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