Space News & Blog Articles

When astronauts finally reach Mars, they'll face a unique challenge: walking and working in gravity that's only 37% as strong as Earth's. After spending months in the weightlessness of space, their weakened muscles and bones will struggle to cope with even this reduced gravity. Now, researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a promising solution; a soft, wearable exosuit powered by inflatable "bubble muscles."

Scientists have created a groundbreaking computer simulation that mimics what the Square Kilometre Array Low-frequency (SKA-Low) telescope will see when it searches for signals from the universe's earliest epochs. This simulation represents a major step forward in preparing for one of astronomy's most ambitious goals: directly observing the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionisation.

The field of exoplanet studies continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with over 5,900 confirmed discoveries to date. Thanks to improved methods, instruments, and next-generation telescopes, the field is transitioning from exoplanet discovery to characterization. This is one of the main science objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and it has not disappointed! Thanks to Webb's advanced optics and sophisticated instruments, scientists can directly image exoplanets and gain new insights into how they form and what their atmospheres are composed of.

Most scientists agree that supernova explosions have affected Earth's climate, though the details are not all clear. They likely cooled the climate several times in the last several thousand years, just as humanity was becoming established around the world. The evidence is in telescopes and tree rings.

For most of us, dust is just something we have to clean up. For astronomers, interstellar dust is a hindrance when they want to study distant objects. However, recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of a distant galaxy are changing that. This infrared-sensitive observatory is letting them find a way to use dust to understand the evolution of early galaxies. In addition, it uncovered a special property of that galaxy's ice-covered dust, indicating it could be similar to the materials that formed our Solar System.

The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun follows during a year. It's an imaginary line that the planets follow, with some small deviations, around the Sun. Spacecraft find it easier to follow the ecliptic because it's generally more energy efficient. However, the Solar Orbiter isn't on the ecliptic and it's giving us our first up-close looks at the Sun's poles.

When Apollo astronauts first set foot on the lunar surface, they expected to find grey rocks and dust. What they didn't anticipate was discovering something that looked almost magical: tiny, brilliant orange glass beads scattered across the Moon's landscape like microscopic gems. These beads, each smaller than a grain of sand, are actually ancient time capsules from when the Moon was volcanically active billions of years ago. The beads formed some 3.3 to 3.6 billion years ago during volcanic eruptions on the surface of the then, young satellite.

As climate change accelerates and politicians continue to argue, scientists are exploring radical new ways to protect our planet. One of the most ambitious concepts under development is a Planetary Sunshade System (PSS), essentially a massive space based umbrella designed to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth and help stabilise global temperatures.

Gas clouds in the Milky Way's Galactic Center (GC) contain copious amounts of star-forming gas. But for some reason, few massive stars form there, even though similar gas clouds elsewhere in the galaxy easily form massive stars. The clouds also form fewer stars overall. Are they a new type of molecular cloud?

When the Sun rages and storms in Earth's direction, it changes our planet's atmosphere. The atmosphere puffs up, meaning satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) meet more resistance. This resistance creates orbital decay, dragging satellites to lower altitudes. One researcher says we can change the design of satellites to decrease their susceptibility.

A team of astronomers have captured spectacular images of what appears to be a gas giant planet in the process of formation, located 430 light years away from Earth. The discovery, led by researchers at the University of Galway, provides rare visual evidence of how planets are born within swirling disks of dust and gas around young stars.

How can radio astronomers successfully identify extraterrestrial radio signals while discerning them from Earth-based radio signals? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how machine learning could be used to search for extraterrestrial technosignatures while simultaneously identifying radio contamination from human radio signals. This study has the potential to help radio astronomers develop more efficient methods in searching for and identifying radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

Astronomers have discovered that supermassive black holes in the early universe were far more powerful than previously thought, blasting jets of material across incredible distances at nearly the speed of light. This groundbreaking discovery, made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, offers new insights into how these cosmic monsters shaped the universe during its most dynamic period.

The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.

As astronomers found more and more exoplanets in recent years, they've observed an unusual gap in the population. It's called the Neptunian Desert, a curious scarcity of Neptune-sized exoplanets orbiting close to their stars. Researchers just discovered an exoplanet in the Neptunian Desert around a Sun-like star. Can it help explain the Desert?

Since 2001, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been studying the Martian surface and atmosphere to look for evidence of past or present water and ice, and study the planet's geology and radiation environment. As the longest-running mission to orbit another planet, this robotic probe has taken some impressive images of the Red Planet and its major surface features. In a new panorama, the Mars Odyssey orbiter captured a spectacular view of Arsia Mons, peeking above a dense canopy of clouds just before dawn. This marks the first time one of Mars' volcanoes has been imaged on the planet's horizon.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured an extraordinary image of an unusually cold exoplanet in what scientists describe as a "chaotic" and "abnormal" planetary system. The discovery offers new insights into how planetary systems can develop in dramatically different ways from our own Solar System.

In this series we are exploring NASA's top five challenges as detailed in its Civil Space Shortfall Ranking, which is basically NASA's Christmas wish list. These are the technologies that NASA believes we need to develop if we want to go to space…and stay there.

When the Mariner 9 flew past Mars in 1972, scientists were treated to the first evidence that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. Subsequent missions confirmed this theory based on the study of features that form in the presence of water (flow channels, delta fans, and sedimentary deposits), the presence of hydrated minerals and clays in impact basins, and the discovery of subsurface ice and permafrost across the planet. These findings indicate that Mars once had an atmosphere thick enough to maintain temperatures to maintain surface water in a liquid state.

Astronomers recently used a pair of powerful telescopes to zero in on a cosmic battle occurring some 11 billion light-years away from Earth. The combatants are a pair of galaxies charging at each other over and over again, at velocities upwards of 500 kilometers per second. According to one of the scientists studying the scene, one galaxy is cutting into the heart of the other with a blast of radiation. “We hence call this system the ‘cosmic joust,’” said study co-lead Pasquier Noterdaeme of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.

The COSMOS scientific collaboration has released the largest map of the Universe ever created. It contains almost 800,000 galaxies, some from the Universe's earliest times. The map challenges some of our ideas about the early universe.