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Scientists are certain a wayward SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon as predicted

A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday after drifting off course for the past year, scientists reported.

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Diffuse inter-filament gas is likely a key fuel source for massive star formation

Researchers from Kyushu University have discovered that diffuse gas surrounding dense filaments in a nearby stellar nursery plays a much larger role in star formation than previously recognized. By tracking the movement of gas in the Monoceros R2 hub–filament system, the team found that low-density gas contributes to hub growth both through direct inflow and […]

Runaway supermassive black hole RBH-1 offers new way to reconstruct ancient merger

Black holes are fascinating regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, even light, can escape them. The largest known black holes, called supermassive black holes, contain millions to billions of times the mass of the sun and are typically located at the centers of galaxies.

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‘Little red dots’ may be pulsating monster stars that created early-universe black holes

Astronomers have speculated about the mysterious “little red dots” seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s images of the early universe: They could be galaxies, black holes, quasi-stars, starbursts … or something else entirely.

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Astronomers catch ‘Hatchling’ quasar breaking out of its dusty cocoon

Using observations from multiple powerful telescopes, a team of astronomers studied a red quasar nicknamed “the Hatchling” at redshift 3.7. They may have identified one of the clearest examples yet of a quasar caught in transition between a heavily obscured and fully exposed phase.

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SpaceX aims to use rockets to quickly transport cargo across the Earth and into orbit

You might think of rockets as powerful vehicles that blast astronaut crews and robotic missions into space. But what if they could be used to send cargo from one side of Earth to the other in a fraction of the time it would take a plane? The company SpaceX recently announced a project that aims […]

Venus’s polygonal plains could point to a watery past

Venus may be overwhelmingly inhospitable today, but many planetary scientists believe that it wasn’t always this way. Billions of years ago, some observational evidence suggested that our planetary neighbor may have looked far more like Earth, complete with oceans potentially capable of harboring life.

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Total eclipse gives scientists chance to probe sun’s mysteries

Scientists plan to use a total solar eclipse that will be visible in Spain next week as a rare chance to learn more about the stormy, unpredictable nature of our star.

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‘Like the end of the world’: The eclipse chasers flocking to Spain

Suddenly, the world is plunged into an eerie, violet darkness. The temperature drops. Birds and other animals, bewildered by unforeseen night, start behaving strangely. Stars and planets appear in the sky next to the blotted-out sun.

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NASA’s PUNCH sharpens solar storm forecasting in first test

Using continuous imagery from NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, scientists predicted the near-Earth arrival of a solar eruption to within 30 minutes in an initial proof-of-concept test. The results, presented Tuesday at the Committee on Space Research Scientific Meeting and under review at the journal Space Weather, could revolutionize the […]

Mapping the upper atmosphere with public Starlink satellite data

The space around Earth is becoming increasingly crowded, with thousands of satellites and pieces of debris now sharing low Earth orbit. Even above this region—at altitudes of several hundred kilometers—the extremely thin upper atmosphere can slow satellites, making accurate information on atmospheric density essential for predicting satellite motion and preventing collisions.

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Designing memory-centric chips for future space telescopes

Two proposed computer chip designs could efficiently process data on future space telescopes while they search for Earth–like exoplanets, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study that will be presented at the IEEE Space Computing Conference in August.

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Mapping monsters: Data release unveils all-sky views of supermassive black holes

Data released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) marks a landmark expansion in the study of accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). As part of the fifth generation of the survey (SDSS-V), the Black Hole Mapper (BHM) program is providing unprecedented insights into the masses, growth and physics of quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) […]

Astronomers catch massive star’s death from the first explosive moment

In March 2026, the Einstein Probe detected a brief flash of soft X-rays emitted from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. The flash, dubbed EP260321a, immediately triggered a worldwide observing campaign. Within an hour, ground-based telescopes began monitoring the source, revealing a rapidly brightening supernova, later designated SN 2026gzf. Two teams of scientists used […]

Asteroid Nysa’s rare three-lobed structure challenges formation models

Named for the mythical valley where the god Dionysus was raised in secret by nymphs, the asteroid 44 Nysa inhabits the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Through observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have determined it to be the largest and brightest known member of a rare category of asteroids called “E-types,” made […]