Space News & Blog Articles

We might not currently have any technology that would make a space elevator viable on Earth. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t work on other bodies around the solar system. One of the most interesting places that one could work is around Ceres, the Queen of the Asteroid Belt, and potentially one of the biggest sources of resources for humanity’s expansion into space. A new paper from researchers at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Industrial CNT, a manufacturer of Carbon Nanotube (one potential material for the space elevator), details just how useful such an elevator could be.

Hycean worlds are also called ocean worlds. They're planets covered in oceans that also have thick hydrogen atmospheres. There are no confirmed Hycean worlds—also called ocean worlds—but many candidates. Even though they're only candidates so far, researchers are curious about their habitability. New research examines the role tidal heating plays in their potential habitability.

The telescope's journey began in the early 1600s when Dutch spectacle maker Jan Lippershey discovered that combining lenses could magnify distant objects. Galileo Galilei quickly improved the designs and became the first to explore the heavens, revealing the Moon's craters, Jupiter’s moons and the rings of Saturn. Over the centuries, telescopes evolved from simple lens combinations to massive ground-based observatories with enormous mirrors, and eventually to space-based instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope that eliminated Earth's atmospheric interference. Today's cutting-edge telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, use advanced technology to look deeper into space than ever before.

Scientists have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to make a groundbreaking discovery about water in space, detecting a special type of water ice around a young star that could help explain how water travels from stellar nurseries to planets and comets.

Scientists are revolutionising the search for extraterrestrial life by challenging our somewhat Earth-centric assumptions about where and how life might exist in the universe. A new review argues that we must embrace the remarkable diversity of exoplanets discovered over the past two decades and consider a much broader range of environments that could potentially host life.

In 1912, astronomer Victor Hess discovered strange, high-energy particles known as "cosmic rays." Since then, researchers have hunted for their birthplaces. Today, we know about some of the cosmic ray "launch pads", ranging from the Sun and supernova explosions to black holes and distant active galactic nuclei. What astronomers are now searching for are sources of cosmic rays within the Milky Way Galaxy.

Extended periods in space can lead to all kinds of health problems. The hazard posed by radiation is well known and is the reason NASA and other space agencies impose limits on the amount astronauts are exposed to. There's also microgravity, which has been studied extensively thanks to regular missions to the International Space Station and long-term studies (like the NASA Twins Study). According to this research, extended periods in microgravity will result in muscle atrophy, bone density loss, changes in eyesight, effects on the cardiovascular and endocrine systems, and even genetic changes.

If our Solar System seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way. Earth revolves, night follows day, the Moon moves through light and shadow, and the Sun hangs in the sky. But in reality, everything is moving and influencing everything else, and the fine balance we observe can easily be disrupted. Could passing stars have disrupted Earth's orbit and ushered in dramatic climatic changes in our planet's past?

Shortly after astronomers detected asteroid 2024 YR4 on December 27, 2024, they realized it posed no threat to Earth. But it still might impact the Moon in 2032. The impact debris could threaten satellites and trigger an extraordinarily stunning meteor shower.

LUNAA Journeys seeks to make the island of Saint Lucia the astronomy hub of the Caribbean.

In March 2025, NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission launched into orbit to monitor the Sun's outer atmosphere to reveal more about solar wind. Developed and led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), this constellation consists of four microsatellites that observe the Sun's corona and heliosphere using continuous 3D deep-field imaging. While completing its commission phase, the Wide Field Imagers (WFIs) aboard the four PUNCH spacecraft captured high-resolution images of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) in greater detail than any previous mission.

Very massive stars (VMSs), which typically has masses about 100 times that of our own Sun, are critical components in our understanding of the formation of important astronomical structures like black holes and supernovae. However, there are some observed characteristics of VMSs that don’t fit the expected behavior based on the best models we have of them. In particular, they hover around a relatively limited band of temperatures, which are hard to replicate with typical stellar evolution models. A new paper from Kendall Shepherd and their co-authors at the Institute for Advanced Study (SISSA) in Italy describes a series of new models based on updated solar winds that better fit the observations of VMSs in their natural environment, and might aid in our understanding of the development of some of the most fascinating objects in the Universe.

Scientists using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made an exciting discovery about the early universe. They found dozens of small galaxies that played a huge role in transforming our cosmos from a dark, foggy place into the bright, clear universe we see today.

Solar sails represent one of the most elegant concepts in space exploration: using sunlight itself to propel spacecraft through the cosmos without any fuel. But these thin, light giants face a stubborn engineering challenge that has plagued missions since their inception; keeping control while riding the solar wind.

Thanks to observatories like the venerable Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and its next-generation cousin, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers are finally getting the chance to study galaxies that existed just one billion years after the Big Bang. This period is known as "Cosmic Dawn" because it was during this period that the first stars formed and came together to create the first galaxies in the Universe. The study of these galaxies has revealed some surprising and fascinating things that are allowing astronomers to learn how large-scale structures in the Universe came to be and how they've evolved since.

We don't know what dark matter is, but that doesn't stop astronomers from using it to their advantage. Dark matter is part of what makes gravitational lensing so effective. Astronomers expect the Roman Space Telescope to find 160,000 gravitational lenses, and dark matter makes a crucial contribution to these lenses.

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.