Space News & Blog Articles

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Have Stellar Flybys Altered Earth's Climate in the Past?

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?

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The Mother of All Meteor Showers Could Threaten Satellites

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.

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Amateur Astronomy Outreach in Saint Lucia with LUNAA Journeys

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

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NASA's PUNCH Mission Captured Images of a Huge Solar Eruption

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.

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Very Massive Stars Expel More Matter Than Previously Thought

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.

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Webb Sees the Galaxies that Cleared Out the Cosmic Fog

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.

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A Better Way to Turn Solar Sails

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.

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Telescopes in Chile Capture Images of the Earliest Galaxies in the Universe

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.

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The Universe is Filled With Natural Telescope Lenses. Roman Will Use Them to Study Dark Matter

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.

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How Bubble Muscles Could Help Astronauts Get Their Space Legs

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."

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1000 Hours with the Square Kilometre Array is Our Best Hope to Finally See Cosmic Dawn.

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.

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Webb Shows Another Jupiter Forming in Real Time

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.

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Supernova Explosions Changed Earth's Climate and Shaped Humanity's History

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.

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Distant Galaxy Has Similar Icy Dust to the Milky Way. So, Similar Planets?

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.

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The Solar Orbiter is Giving Us an Unprecedented Look at the Sun's Poles

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.

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The Moon is Covered in Tiny Orange Glass Beads. Now We Know Why.

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.

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Would a Planetary Sunshade Help Cool the Planet? This Mission Could Find Out

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.

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The Galactic Center Struggles to Form Massive Stars

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?

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Geomagnetic Storms Bring Satellites Down Faster

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.

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You're Looking at a Newly Forming Planet

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.

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Filtering Terrestrial Contamination in the Search for Alien Signals

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.

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