China’s Tianwen-2 sample-return mission is well on its way to its target, an asteroid called Kamo’oalewa. The spacecraft left Earth in May 2025 and should return in late 2027 with samples of a space rock that scientists had assumed originated from the moon. However, a new study published in Nature Communications suggests that we may […]

Two French astronauts are to blast into space next year, one of whom will stay on board the world’s first commercial space station, under a new deal sealed between France and the U.S. company Vast.

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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin said Tuesday that last week’s rocket explosion spared fuel tanks and some other critical parts of the launch pad.

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Astronomers monitoring a nearby active galaxy for six years have watched its supermassive black hole dramatically wake up, brightening by a factor of 10 across ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. The paper outlining the study was posted to the preprint server arXiv on May 18.

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New observatories and spacecraft missions are probing environments in our solar system that could potentially host life but have long remained hidden. Icy moons like Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa likely contain oceans beneath frozen outer shells. But a layer of ice prohibits space probes from sampling them directly.

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A team of astronomers has found the strongest evidence yet that some planets outside our solar system may be magnetic. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the Gemini North telescope, the researchers measured wind speeds on seven very hot, Jupiter-like exoplanets.

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When it comes to understanding Earth and our changing environment, space is the place. Not only does it give us an overall holistic view of the planet below, but satellite-based imagery can transcend national boundaries and give us an understanding of key changes that often go unseen at ground level.

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4.5 billion years ago was an interesting time for Earth. The atmosphere was thick and what we would now think of as toxic. The moon, which was freshly formed, looks much more massive than it does today and faintly glows with the residual heat from its own creation. And the floor was literally lava. Everywhere. […]