This summer, Subaru Telescope will welcome a new near-infrared spectrograph, NINJA, for its first on-sky engineering observations. NINJA is a new spectrograph designed for time-critical observations of rapidly evolving cosmic events, such as the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave sources.

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The expense of launching cargo into space will plummet over the next few years, with the cost of reaching orbit forecast to more than halve between now and the end of the decade, and fall by around 93% by 2040, according to new Cambridge-led research.

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After decades of analyzing reams of lunar rocks back here on Earth, the canonical view of the moon was that it was anhydrous; that it had extraordinarily little water. That all began to change in 2009 with new data from NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and the much-ballyhooed evidence of water ice […]

Scientists have detected evidence of landslides on Pluto for the first time. A paper published in the journal Icarus reports that images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby revealed six large landslides in three impact craters.

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The planets that appear most common in the universe could have a lot of water—but it could be hiding where telescopes can’t detect it, according to a new study led by scientists with the University of Chicago.

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Sugars are key biomolecules in living organisms, as they form the backbone of DNA and RNA and play a fundamental role in metabolic processes. In theories of the origin of life, sugars are also essential for the synthesis of the first nucleic acids. Despite their importance, one of the major questions in origin-of-life research is […]

Since gravitational waves were first detected in 2015, instruments including LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA have picked up a steady stream of signals from colliding black holes, building a catalog that now numbers in the hundreds. Yet despite this wealth of data, a fundamental question has remained stubbornly unresolved: How do these black holes actually form? […]

Shielding astronauts from the deadly radiation they face is a central challenge for any designer of a deep-space crewed mission. Even relatively low levels of exposure over long periods can lead to everything from central nervous system damage to cancer. But current solutions, such as passive water shells or active superconducting magnets, have their own […]