Space

For almost a century, astronomers have understood that the Universe is in a state of expansion. Since the 1990s, they have come to understand that as of 4 billion years ago, the rate of expansion has been speeding up. As this progresses, and the galaxy clusters and filaments of the Universe move farther apart, scientists

The first object within the Milky Way galaxy caught emitting fast radio bursts is now officially a repeater. In a new peer-reviewed paper, SGR 1935+2154 has been described spitting out two more powerful radio signals consistent with those seen from extragalactic sources. The new signals, however, are not all the same strength. This suggests that

It’s comforting to imagine that with both space- and Earth-based telescopes trained on the cosmos, we’d be able to spot any hazardously sized asteroids heading our way a mile off, with plenty of time to paint them white or explode them away. But for every asteroid we see coming in our direction, there’s a number we

The Milky Way has collided and merged with multiple other galaxies over its long lifespan, but piecing together its history has been a painstaking task. A new analysis of dense star clusters orbiting the Milky Way has now given us the most complete galactic merger history yet. And in those data is a previously unknown

Four astronauts were successfully launched on the SpaceX Crew Dragon “Resilience” to the International Space Station on Sunday, the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring. Three Americans – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker – and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi blasted off

We witnessed an amazing astronomical spectacle in the early morning skies over the Kuwaiti desert in November 1998. That year, the Leonid meteors put on a spectacular display, topping an estimated 1,000 meteors per hour near sunrise. On most years, however, the Lion whimpers with a few paltry meteors per hour, but once every 33

NASA has given SpaceX the go-ahead to launch its first full crew of four astronauts toward the International Space Station (ISS). If all goes according to plan, the company’s Falcon 9 rocket will roar off its historic launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Sunday night, careen through Earth’s atmosphere, and jettison a Crew Dragon

In its 4.6 billion-year-long history, Mars has taken its fair share of punches from hurtling asteroids and careening comets.  Today, the surface of the red planet is covered in no less than 43,000 impact craters larger than 5 kilometres; some ancient regions have received more of a beating than others. In the ancient Martian highlands of Noachis

A dying massive star is not a peaceful event. It blasts off its outer material in a colossal explosion, irradiating space with high-energy gamma radiation for several years. Empty space isn’t the only thing exposed to this radiation, however. New research suggests that Earth’s ancient trees may contain evidence of these celestial explosions.  “These are

The Universe can be a bit like a magic trick. When you shift to look at the different wavelengths of light, you can see all sorts of objects, events and interactions that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. Using the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico, astronomers led by Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais of the

From across the Universe, 5.5 billion light-years away, a range of telescopes has captured the bright flash of a short gamma-ray burst. It’s reminiscent of the kilonova explosion associated with the neutron star collision we detected in a historic first back in 2017, prompting astronomers to wonder if that’s what we’ve witnessed now. That 2017 detection,

Australia’s iconic 64-meter (210 ft) Parkes radio telescope has been given a new traditional name to recognize the Wiradjuri, who own the land on which the telescope sits. The Wiradjuri are some of Australia’s First People who have occupied the continent and its adjacent islands for over 65,000 years. The telescope received the name Murriyang, which represents

Obtaining minerals in space may be a little easier than we’d thought – with the help of some of Earth’s tiniest inhabitants. Experiments aboard the International Space Station have shown that bacteria can improve space mining efficiency by over 400 percent, offering a much easier way to access materials such as magnesium, iron, and the

For the second time in only a matter of months, a cable accident has occurred at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, causing yet more damage to one of the world’s largest and most powerful radio telescopes. In August, astronomers and science-lovers alike were aghast to see a giant hole ripped through the facility’s massive

Europa beckons. This distant, icy orb may be only one of Jupiter’s almost 80 known moons, but it’s what’s inside that counts – and what’s inside Europa is predicted to be very special indeed. Under Europa’s icy surface, scientists predict the existence of a giant, hidden ocean: a vast reservoir of water that could represent

A year in space is no walk in the park. Just ask Scott Kelly, the American astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. His long-term stay in space changed his DNA, telomeres, and gut microbiome, he lost bone density, and he still had sore feet three months later. But it’s a

We know that Mars was once much wetter than it is now, but the questions of when water formed and evaporated away are much more difficult to answer. A new study now suggests that water was present on the Red Planet some 4.4 billion years ago, much earlier than previously thought. That’s based on an

For astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists, the ability to spot the first stars that formed in our Universe has always been just beyond reach. On the one hand, there are the limits of our current telescopes and observatories, which can only see so far. The farthest object ever observed was MACS 1149-JD, a galaxy located 13.2

What you’re seeing in this remarkable image from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile is something that’s never been observed anywhere else: A planetary nebula made up of two closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star. That third star wasn’t spotted until centuries after the discovery of the nebula itself, known as

There’s never been a radio silence quite like this one. After long months with no way of making contact with Voyager 2, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the record-setting interstellar spacecraft. The breakdown in communications – lasting since March, almost eight months and a whole pandemic ago – wasn’t due to some rogue malfunction,

Astrophysicists have detected a burst of cosmic radio waves within our galaxy for the first time and identified its source, according to research published Wednesday that sheds new light on one of the mysteries of the Universe.  The origin of powerful fast radio bursts (FRBs) – intense flashes of radio emission that only last a

A distant asteroid trailing in the gravitational wake of Mars has been observed in greater detail than ever before, and the close-up reveals a surprising resemblance – one that raises some interesting questions about the object’s ancient origins. The asteroid in question, called (101429) 1998 VF31, is part of a group of trojan asteroids sharing

SpaceX may try impose its “own legal regime” on Mars and form a “self-governing”, self-sustaining settlement where Earth laws wouldn’t apply. Though this may sound like a page taken out of a sci-fi novel, Elon Musk‘s aerospace company has indicated its intentions to do just that in two recent and remarkable posts. The first is a wide-ranging Law360

On Monday, the world celebrated 20 years of continuous human presence in space. Astronauts and cosmonauts have lived aboard the International Space Station without a break since 2 November 2000. Over those 7,300 days, the US$150 billion orbiting laboratory has hosted 241 people from 19 countries, and more than 3,000 scientific experiments have been conducted there. Still,

Earth orbits the sun like a ship sailing in circles around its anchor. But what if someone – or something – cut that ship loose? Unbound from any star or solar system, what would become of a tiny world flying helplessly and heedlessly through interstellar space? What happens when a planet goes rogue? Scientists suspect that

Centaurs are rare celestial objects that can combine some of the different features of asteroids and comets. They’re basically rocky in nature, like asteroids, but can also throw out clouds of dust and gas as their exteriors vaporize, like comets. When centaurs emit these gases, they’re considered active. We’ve only ever found 18 chemically active

Every 200,000 to 300,000 years, Earth’s magnetic poles reverse. What was once the north pole becomes the south, and vice versa. It’s a time of invisible upheaval. The last reversal was unusual because it was so long ago. For some reason, the poles have remained oriented the way they are now for about three-quarters of

There are many unanswered questions about our place in the Universe. Why are we here? What is the likelihood of our existence? Could there be others like us out there in the galaxy? One of the numbers that could help us answer these questions is this: How many rocky planets like Earth are orbiting stars

NASA said Thursday its robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex was able to stow a rock and dust sample scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, after a flap that had wedged open put the mission at risk. “We are here to announce today that we’ve successfully completed that operation,” said Rich Burns, the mission’s project manager. The probe

Philae has been dead for years. Its last transmission was received in July 2015; now, its unresponsive form rests under a rocky overhang on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Yet, even as the robotic lander lies in cold repose, scientists haven’t given up on it. They have finally found the place where Philae bounced as it was coming

A little over five years ago, humanity was yet to detect gravitational waves. Now, observations are pouring in at an astonishing speed. In a six-month span last year, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration detected, on average, 1.5 gravitational wave events per week. From 1 April to 1 October 2019, the upgraded LIGO and Virgo interferometers detected 39

A meteorite that landed on a frozen lake in 2018 contains thousands of organic compounds that formed billions of years ago and could hold clues about the origins of life on Earth. The meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 16, 2018, after a very long journey through the freezing vacuum of space, lighting up skies over Ontario, Canada,

NASA’s Juno spacecraft just captured images of colourful bursts of lightning-like electricity high in Jupiter’s atmosphere. These phenomena, which include jellyfish-shaped ‘sprites’ and glowing disks called ‘elves’, also occur high up in Earth’s atmosphere during thunderstorms. They were first documented in 1989. Scientists predicted that other planets that have lightning, like Jupiter, would also produce

Titan, the already pretty weird moon of Saturn, just got a little bit weirder. Astronomers have detected cyclopropenylidene (C3H2) in its atmosphere – an extremely rare carbon-based molecule that’s so reactive, it can only exist on Earth in laboratory conditions. In fact, it’s so rare that it has never before been detected in an atmosphere,

Roughly two to three times Earth’s distance from the Sun, in the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, 16 Psyche makes its home. This giant metal asteroid is one of the most massive objects in the Asteroid Belt, categorised as a minor planet. Astronomers think that 16 Psyche is the exposed core of

The discovery of the extraordinary exoplanet LTT 9779b was first announced a month ago. Just 260 light-years away, the planet was immediately pegged as an excellent candidate for follow-up study of its curious atmosphere. But it turns out we didn’t even have to wait too long to learn more. LTT 9779b is a little bigger than

For more than two decades, astronomers have been systematically tracing mystery sources of high-energy gamma rays to their sources. One, however, remained stubborn – the brightest unidentified source of gamma rays in the Milky Way. It seemed to be coming from a binary system 2,740 light-years away, but only one of the stars could be found.

It’s official. There’s water on the Moon. We’ve thought that there was for over a decade, based on detections described back in 2009, but there was room for interpretation in the wavelengths used. Now, using a different wavelength unique to water, scientists report the first unambiguous detection. Those 2009 conclusions were apparently on the money.

In 2005 astronomers found a dense grouping of stars in the Virgo constellation. It looked like a star cluster, except further surveys showed that some of the stars are moving towards us, and some are moving away. That finding was unexpected and suggested the stream was no simple star cluster. A 2019 study showed that

Two years after it left Earth, Mercury probe BepiColombo has completed the first of its first flybys of Venus. The manoeuvre is designed to give the spacecraft a boost on its journey – but it’s also too good an opportunity to pass up for a little science. As it swung around the planet on a

NASA said Friday that its robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx had succeeded in collecting a large sample of particles from the Bennu asteroid this week – but so much that it was leaking. The team in charge of the probe is now working to quickly stow the remaining samples that would eventually be delivered back to Earth

For the first time, astronomers have seen clear evidence of plumes of toxic volcanic gas erupting forth from the volcanoes of Io. New radio images of the Jovian moon have finally provided some answers to long-standing questions about its atmosphere. Io is the most volcanic place in the Solar System. More than 400 active volcanoes

Astronomers are working hard to catalogue all of the exoplanets visible from Earth, but now two researchers have turned the idea around, to look at which exoplanets are getting a good view of Earth in return. It turns out there are 1,004 (and counting) main sequence stars, similar to the Sun, with orbiting Earth-like planets

A little dead star that dazzled us earlier this year is not done with its shenanigans. Magnetar SGR 1935+2154, which in April emitted the first known fast radio burst from inside the Milky Way, has flared up once more, giving astronomers yet another chance to solve more than one major cosmic mystery. On 8 October

Want a little reminder of how amazingly clever we humans can be? Yesterday, from a distance of more than 320 million kilometres (200 million miles) away, NASA scientists piloted a spacecraft to gently touch down on a spinning asteroid, collecting a sample of surface rubble to bring back home to Earth. At 6:08 PM EDT,

According to the latest dispatch from NASA, the space agency has an “exciting new discovery about the Moon” coming on Monday 26 October. Curiously, the new results are courtesy of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). It’s the world’s largest airborne observatory, and is actually a Boeing 747SP plane with a hole cut out

The Orionids meteor shower is peaking this week, bringing about 15 to 20 shooting stars per hour. The meteors barrel into Earth’s atmosphere with unusual speed, travelling roughly 41 miles per second – about 148,000 mph (240,000 km/h). In their rush, they often leave behind glowing trails of debris that shine in the sky for several seconds

 NASA just landed a spacecraft on an asteroid and, if everything went as planned, sucked up a sample of dust and rock from the surface. From 200 million miles away, NASA and its engineering partner, Lockheed Martin, instructed the spacecraft to descend to the surface of a space rock called Bennu. In just 5 to