Space

It’s easy to think of black holes as voracious destruction machines, slurping up everything in their immediate vicinity. But that’s not always the case. The environments around active supermassive black holes are complex, and last year, a team of astronomers showed that there’s a safe zone around each supermassive black hole in which thousands of

A dead star 14,350 light-years away has just become the most important clue in solving the mystery of fast radio bursts. Earlier this year, it spat out a colossal, milliseconds-long radio flare – and now the first published analysis of the event notes its similarity to the enigmatic extragalactic signals. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are

SpaceX just achieved an historic feat that even its CEO, Elon Musk, thought improbable when he founded the rocket company in 2002: flying people to and from space. On Sunday afternoon, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely careened back to Earth after a 27-million-mile mission in orbit around the planet. The men rode SpaceX’s new

After travelling more than 27 million miles around planet Earth, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are headed home inside SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spaceship. Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, the two-man crew undocked their ship from the International Space Station Saturday evening, beginning the return of the first

No matter where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home. And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space. The latest image of the Terran System comes from China’s Mars mission, Tianwen-1, which launched on July 23. It captured an image of

The Crew Dragon spacecraft, produced by private company SpaceX, is scheduled to return from the International Space Station (ISS) and splash down in the Atlantic ocean on August 2. Contingent on a favourable weather forecast and a successful final week at the ISS, NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will begin the undocking procedure

Despite the threat of Hurricane Isaias strafing coastal Florida with brutal weather, NASA and SpaceX are “go” to return the first commercial astronauts to planet Earth this weekend. SpaceX made history in May when it became the first company to launch a crewed spaceship to the International Space Station. In doing so, Elon Musk‘s rocket company also revived the

Exoplanets have been a particularly hot topic of late. More than 4,000 of them have been discovered since the first in 1995. Now one more can potentially be added to the list. This one is orbiting Gliese 3470, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Cancer. What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that this planet

Every good story deserves a sequel – and the strange white cloud spotted above an extinct Martian volcano back in 2018 just got one, because the stunning fog trail has made another appearance. In fact, this is the latest instalment in a long-running series, and this time scientists were looking out expectantly for the event.

Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that they remained as little more than collections of rocks, or “rubble piles”. But one

Away from the glare of civilisation’s blinding lights, an unimpeded view of the night sky makes you feel like you’re standing on the shores of eternity. But there is one place on Earth where the sights stretch just that little bit further than anywhere else. Researchers have measured the clarity of the stars at a

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who made spaceflight history on May 30 by becoming the first people to launch to orbit aboard a SpaceX vehicle, might see their weekend homecoming plans thrown to the wind. After docking SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour ship to the International Space Station and spending two months there, the men are preparing to

Mars 2020, the spaceship carrying NASA’s new rover Perseverance to the Red Planet, experienced technical difficulties and was temporarily running on essential systems only, the agency said Thursday. “Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars

A rocket carrying NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover yet has launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, though its crucial journey through space is just beginning. The Perseverance rover and its landing apparatus is packed inside the top of a 197-foot Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Thursday morning. At 7:50 am ET, the rocket’s boosters fired and

On Thursday morning, NASA will launch its fifth Mars rover: A robotic scientist the size of an SUV. The $US2.4 billion, nuclear-powered vehicle, named Perseverance (“Percy” for short) is designed to trundle along the Martian surface, mine for signs of ancient life, capture high-quality video and audio, and collect rock and soil samples for an eventual return

Elon Musk‘s growing constellation of internet satellites has been sending streaks of bright light across night skies around the world. Even the biggest comet to pass Earth in 25 years wasn’t spared. A striking photo showing Comet Neowise behind those streaks of light shows how easily the satellites can upstage observations of distant objects in

For the first time, scientists have observed that ‘megaripples’ on Mars – huge sand waves seen on the Martian surface – are moving structures, and not ancient relics stuck in place since the Red Planet’s distant past. Megaripples, which also occur in deserts on Earth, are generally larger than smaller sand ripples, and are composed

Humans are about to make history by sending a little piece of a Martian rock back to the surface of Mars for the first time ever. The meteorite fragment Sayh al Uhaymir 008 (or SaU 008) will hitch a ride on the 2020 NASA Perseverance rover mission on Thursday – some 600,000 years after it

NASA on Monday gave its latest Mars rover Perseverance the all clear to launch later this week on a mission to seek out signs of ancient microbial life. “The launch readiness review is complete, and we are indeed go for launch,” administrator Jim Bridenstine said. “We are in extraordinary times right now with the coronavirus

A stunning flash of ultraviolet light from an exploding white dwarf has been detected by astronomers for only the second time, and could give researchers important clues about what spurs the demise of these ancient, spent stars. Researchers became aware of this unusual supernova – called SN2019yvq – last December, only a day after the

It’s common knowledge that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System. Around it, the planets orbit – along with a thick belt of asteroids, some meteor fields, and a handful of far-travelling comets. But that’s not the whole story. “Instead, everything orbits the Solar System centre of mass,” James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist

The Hubble space telescope has spent the past 30 years orbiting 547 km (340 miles) above Earth. The ageing satellite has had a couple of hiccups in the last few years, but it’s not done taking incredible photos of our cosmic backyard yet. For example, earlier this month, Hubble flexed its Solar System chops, and

China has launched its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars. A rocket holding an orbiter, lander and rover took flight from the country’s Hainan province earlier this week, with hopes to deploy the rover on Mars’s surface by early next year. Similarly, the launch of the Emirates Mars Mission last Sunday marked the Arab world’s foray into interplanetary

In the very early days of the Solar System, baby Earth may have taken a much shorter time to form than we previously thought. According to an analysis in February 2020, there’s evidence that most of Earth took just 5 million years to come together – several times shorter than current models suggest. This revision

Spiral galaxies look nice and tidy, with most of their stars and gas confined to a disc neatly arranged in swirling spiral arms. But there’s a lot more to a galaxy than what we can see, as a new image of invisible phenomena adroitly demonstrates. The image shows a galaxy called NGC 4217, around 67

It’s been busily orbiting and observing Jupiter and its moons for four years now, but the scientific spacecraft Juno still has some surprises to share. For the first time, it has imaged the north pole of one of the oddest objects in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. There, the constant rain of plasma from

The United States accused Russia on Thursday of test-firing an anti-satellite weapon in space, warning that the threat against Washington’s systems was “real, serious and increasing.” US Space Command “has evidence” that Moscow “conducted a non-destructive test of a space-based anti-satellite weapon” on July 15, it said in a statement. “Last week’s test is another

China launched a rover to Mars on Thursday, a journey coinciding with a similar US mission as the powers take their rivalry into deep space. The two countries are taking advantage of a period when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned for a short journey, with the US spacecraft due to lift off on July

When we peer out into intergalactic space, evidence for dark matter is everywhere. It’s in the rotation of galaxies, which cannot be accounted for by observable matter alone. It’s in the way galaxies cluster together, and the path of light as it travels through the Universe. We can’t see dark matter directly, but the effects

The answers to many questions in astronomy are hidden behind the veil of deep time. One of those questions is around the role that supernovae played in the early Universe. It was the job of early supernovae to forge the heavier elements that were not forged in the Big Bang. How did that process play out?

Just over 300 light-years away is a star that’s a lot like a very young version of our Sun, with multiple exoplanets orbiting it. That’s an interesting find in itself. But what makes the system truly dazzling is that it just became the first of its kind to be directly imaged, planets and all. On

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than 4 million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars. The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the Universe”, said Will Percival of the University of

The planet Venus is scorching hot beneath its suffocatingly thick atmosphere, much of its surface shaped by the surges and flows of volcanic activity. Nevertheless, planetary geologists have been unable to find hard evidence that the planet remains volcanically active. Well, we just got some of the best evidence yet. Venus has plenty of volcanic

Comet NEOWISE – a glowing ball of space ice with two colourful tails – has starred in countless photos as it streaks through the skies across the Northern Hemisphere this week. On Tuesday, three cosmic co-stars joined it, making for an astonishing spectacle. The image above shows a split-second meteor streaking across the sky, the

The first Arab space mission to Mars blasted off Monday aboard a rocket from Japan, after weather delays set back the launch of the probe dubbed ‘Hope’. A live feed of the launch showed the rocket carrying the uncrewed probe, known as “Al-Amal” in Arabic, lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan.

As exciting and thrilling as it is to watch all the historic footage from the Apollo Moon landings, you have to admit, the quality is sometimes not all that great. Even though NASA has worked on restoring and enhancing some of the most popular Apollo footage, some of it is still grainy or blurry. But

Ever wondered what space smells like? Well, according to those that have been, it’s a bit burned, a little like gunpowder, has some rum notes, and, if you’re astronaut Tony Antonelli, it’s “a smell that’s different than anything else.” Back in 2008, NASA actually talked with a chemist and director of a fragrance company Steven Pearce to

When magma comes out of the Earth onto the surface, it flows as lava. Those lava flows are fascinating to watch, and they leave behind some unique landforms and rocks. But a lot of what’s fascinating about these flows can be hidden underground, as lava tubes. These lava tubes are turning out to be a

Every now and again, some dead stars called pulsars do something quite odd. They sort of hiccup, making an abrupt acceleration in their rotation speed before – usually – gradually slowing to normal. We’re not sure what causes them; astronomers believe it is some sort of internal process, such as starquakes, or the unpinning of

If we’re going to get serious about long-term space voyages, then being able to patch up injuries will be essential – and that’s no longer a far-off concept. A cosmonaut on board the International Space Station just engineered human cartilage in the microgravity of space for the first time. Bioprinters that can produce human tissue

Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it has a relatively long orbital period, meaning it was only discovered a few months ago. Halley’s comet, for example, takes about 75 years to return

Black holes don’t glow – in fact, they’re famous for doing the opposite. But if they’re actively devouring material from the space around them, that material can blaze like a billion X-ray Suns. And for the first time, astronomers have now seen that blaze mysteriously snuffed out, before gradually returning to brightness. The supermassive black

 A telescope rocketing around the Sun just beamed back the closest images and videos ever recorded of our star, but it’s just getting started on its mission. The Solar Orbiter, built by the European Space Agency (ESA) with help from NASA, flew within 48 million miles (77 million kilometers) of the Sun on June 15

A star discovered hurtling across the Milky Way is so bizarre that astronomers can only conclude it was ejected during a very unusual supernova event. The star – a white dwarf around 1,430 light-years away called SDSS J1240+6710, and nicknamed Dox – is whizzing along at 250 kilometres per second (155 miles per second), against the

A faint and ghostly galaxy 10 million light-years away has delivered one of the holy grails of black hole astronomy. At its heart, lies a black hole that looks to belong to an elusive middleweight class of intermediate-mass black holes, a discovery that could help us understand how some of the most massive black holes

A red dwarf in our Sun’s own back yard seems to have a bad case of indigestion, belching out a flare roughly 20 times more impressive than anything known to come out of our own star. The eruption was caught using a new telescope in Okayama, Japan, when astronomers trained its sights on the constellation

In the darkness of orbital night on July 5, a NASA astronaut floated up to a window on the International Space Station, gazed toward the limb of Earth, and patiently waited for a cosmic spectacle. As the space station careened over the Middle East, the recently discovered Comet NEOWISE and its twin glowing tails rose above the

Looking back through several billion years of history isn’t easy, and new discoveries continually prompt us to rethink just how the Moon came to be. Now, a new study suggests Earth’s satellite is much younger than we tend to think – about 85 million years younger, in fact. Researchers say that lunar rock samples collected on the