Space News & Blog Articles

Nobody expects hydrogen sulphide to smell pleasant. The molecule responsible for the distinctive odour of rotten eggs hardly suggests breakthrough science. Yet its detection in the atmospheres of four distant gas giants has just answered one of planetary science's most fundamental questions: what makes a planet a planet?

The arrival of 3I/ATLAS in our Solar System spawned multiple proposals for a rendezvous mission to study it up close. As the third interstellar object (ISO) ever detected, the wealth of information direct studies could provide would be groundbreaking in many respects. However, the mission architecture for intercepting an interstellar comet poses numerous significant challenges for mission designers and planners. Chief among them is the technological readiness level (TRL) of the proposed propulsion systems, ranging from conventional rockets to directed-energy propulsion (DEP).

At just 500 kilometres across, Saturn's sixth largest moon would fit comfortably inside my home country, the United Kingdom with room to spare. Yet new research reveals this tiny ice world wields electromagnetic influence over distances exceeding half a million kilometres, more than the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Earth's radiation budget, that’s the balance between incoming sunlight and outgoing heat, drives our climate system. Understanding it requires measuring radiation escaping from every corner of our planet, but current satellite observations face a fundamental trade off. Low Earth orbit satellites provide detailed snapshots but miss temporal continuity, whilst geostationary satellites maintain constant watch but can't see the whole globe at once. Time for an unusual solution, enter an unlikely observation platform: the Moon.

The European Space Agency, Arianespace, and ArianeGroup conducted the first launch of the Ariane 6 rocket in July 2024. This three-stage expendable launch system uses a main-stage and upper-stage rocket with strap-on boosters. Designed to succeed the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, this latest member of the rocket family was designed to offer greater versatility and payload capacity than its predecessors. In its original configuration, the Ariane 62, the rocket had two strap-on boosters, giving it a medium payload capacity of 10,350 kg (22,820 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and 4,500 kg (9,900 lb) to geostationary orbit (GSO).

Picture this…. you’ve spent five years building an exquisitely sensitive scientific instrument. You’ve tested it, shipped it halfway around the world, reassembled it in Antarctica, and now you’re watching it disappear into the blue sky aboard a giant balloon. For the next three weeks, all you can do is monitor it from the ground and hope everything works.

Imagine a star that’s been shining steadily for decades, and then suddenly it dims to just 3% of its normal brightness. Not for a few days or weeks, but for more than nine months. That’s exactly what happened to ASASSN-24fw, a star sitting 3,200 light years away in the constellation Monoceros.

When you look at a volcano, you’re seeing the tip of a vastly more complicated system. The mountain itself is just the exit point for processes that have been happening deep underground, perhaps for millions of years. Magma doesn’t simply appear at the surface ready to erupt it rises, stalls, cools, changes, and evolves in underground chambers before finally breaking through.

Scientists have been making some incredible discoveries in space that are shedding new light on the origins of life. In addition to finding amino acids in asteroids, scientists have also found fatty acids found on Mars, sulfur-bearing molecules in interstellar space, and that peptides form spontaneously in space. Most recently, research based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found an abundance of small organic molecules in a nearby galaxy.

China has achieved several impressive milestones in its space program in recent years. As part of their plan to build an outpost on the Moon that will compete with NASA's Artemis Program - the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) - they are busy developing a super-heavy launch system and a crew-capable spacecraft that will take taikonauts to the Moon by the end of the decade. That is the plan, at any rate, and recent tests indicate that they are on track to achieve that goal. On Wednesday, Feb. 11th, the China Manned Spaceflight Agency (CMSA) completed a major test of its Long March-10 rocket and the Mengzhou spacecraft.