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First Proba-3 science: Surprisingly speedy solar wind found in inner corona

Since July 2025, the European Space Agency’s pair of Proba-3 satellites has already created 57 artificial solar eclipses. So far, the mission has collected more than 250 hours of high-resolution videos of the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. That’s the same amount of observing time as about 5,000 total solar eclipse campaigns carried out on […]

The sun is tearing an asteroid to pieces, and Earth is now flying through the fallout

Across Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.

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The moon just got a new scar

Look up at a full moon on a clear night and you are staring at a face that has been punched, gouged, and battered for 4 billion years. Those dark patches are vast basins blasted open by impacts so colossal they reshaped a world. The lighter highlands are pocked and pitted, crater upon crater, each […]

Between eternal night and day, the faces of two cousins of Earth

An international team including the University of Bern (UNIBE) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE), members of the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS, has succeeded in mapping the climate of rocky exoplanets with masses similar to Earth for the first time. This breakthrough is based on continuous observations using the James Webb Space […]

As Artemis II is celebrated, the world faces hard questions about US leadership in space

The successful Artemis II trip around the moon was a historic achievement—the first crewed lunar fly-by in more than 50 years, and the greatest distance yet traveled by humans from our “pale blue dot.”

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Space worms! A microscopic crew goes into orbit to support future moon missions

British scientists have launched a crew of microscopic worms to the International Space Station in a pioneering experiment that could help unlock the secrets of long-duration space travel—and support ambitions to reach the moon and beyond.

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NASA already has next Artemis flight in its sights following astronauts’ triumphant moon flyby

Never-before-glimpsed views of the moon’s far side. Check. Total solar eclipse gracing the lunar scene. Check. New distance record for humanity. Check.

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How Artemis II’s Earthset photo compares with the iconic Earthrise image from 1968

As NASA’s Artemis II mission completed its lunar flyby, the astronauts sent back a stunning image of the colorful Earth setting behind the moon. This breathtaking photo, called Earthset, draws inevitable comparisons with the original Earthrise photo from the Apollo 8 flight in 1968.

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JAXA plans to bring back pristine early solar system samples from a comet

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has been knocking it out of the park with small-body exploration missions for decades. They had historic successes with both Hayabusa and Hayabusa2, and they are going to visit the Martian moons soon with the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. But after that, they are aiming for something much more pristine […]

Advanced mirror technology now powers a breakthrough X-ray telescope

Scientists in Japan have developed a high-resolution X-ray telescope sharp enough to distinguish an object just 3.5 mm wide from one kilometer away, by combining precision mirror-making technology with space astronomy. To test its performance, they built a first-of-its-kind evaluation system, capable of simulating starlight on the ground to measure the telescope’s sharpness before its […]

Scientists spot a solar flare with surprising spectral behavior

On August 19, 2022, solar astronomers using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on the Hawaiian island of Maui caught the fading remnants of a C-class solar flare. Their observations showed something unusual: very strong spectral fingerprints of calcium II H and hydrogen-epsilon lines.

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Astronomers find the strongest evidence yet for the universe’s first stars

For decades, astronomers were only able to study the universe’s very first stars using theoretical models. Now, observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed what may be the most compelling evidence to date for these ancient “Population III” stars, finding them clustered around a small companion object that formed just 400 million […]

Meet Orpheus—A hopper mission built to hunt for life in Martian volcanoes

We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it’s likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on […]

Space telescopes track nearby quasar’s dramatic X-ray state transition

By analyzing the data from various space observatories, Chinese astronomers have inspected a nearby quasar designated SDSS J000532.84+200717.4. Results of the new study, published April 1 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the X-ray variability of this object.

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Artemis crew urges unity on ‘lifeboat’ Earth

Artemis II astronauts expressed awe on Saturday over their record-setting lunar flyby mission, urging unity on Earth after witnessing the planet’s isolation like a “lifeboat” in space.

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