Space News & Blog Articles

On May 26th, 2025, the skies were clear on Mars above the Jezero Crater, where the Perseverance rover is exploring the planet's past. The rover's imaging team took advantage of these conditions to capture the 360-degree panoramic photo shown above, which was stitched together from 96 images taken by the rover's Mastcam-Z camera. The photo shows a location called "Falbreen," which shows the rover's tracks (right side) reaching into the far distance towards its previous stop - a rock outcropping named "Kenmore." Also visible are rocks and a sand ripple strewn with hills in the distance that are up to 65 km (40 mi) away.

If detecting exoplanets was easy, then we should have a complete understanding of the planetary system around our nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri. But we don't, because it's not easy. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system about 4.25 light-years away. The primary star is called Alpha Centauri A, a Sun-like star, and it's in a binary relationship with Alpha Centauri B, another Sun-like star. The third star is a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, and it's the closest one to us.

Mars is a world marked by dramatic landscapes and few regions showcase this better than Acheron Fossae, a spectacular network of deep cracks and valleys that slice through the red planet's surface like ancient scars. Recent images from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft reveal the western edge of this fascinating geological formation, offering new insights into Mars's violent past and changing climate.

Understanding the early Universe is a foundational goal in space science. We're driven to understand Nature and how it evolved from a super-heated plasma after the Big Bang to the structured cosmos we see around us today. One critical moment in time was when the first stars, called Population 3 stars, ignited with fusion and lit up their surroundings.

Searching for life on Mars has been an explicit goal of the astrobiological community for decades. However, they have not really had the resources to effectively do so, and they might be running out of time. Crewed missions to Mars are planned for as little as 15 years from now (though those timelines might be changing…again), and by the time that happens it may be too late to separate Martian life from unintentionally transplanted Earth-life. According to a group of researchers from the Agnostic Life Finding Association, there is one final chance to detect Martian life before it is irreversibly contaminated - the Mars Life Explorer (MLE). But to do its job properly, it’s going to need an upgrade.

When low-mass stars approach the end of their main-sequence phase, they expel clouds of gas that expand to form planetary nebulae. Since they were first identified in the late 1700s, astronomers have identified nebulae of all shapes and sizes, with most appearing circular, elliptical, or bipolar. However, some nebulae stray from this pattern, including the NGC 6072 nebula located about 3,060 light-years away in the southern constellation Scorpius. In a new series of high-resolution images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have noted some peculiar patterns that could provide insight into the lifecycle of stars.

Young stars are known for their instability and unpredictability. Their brightness can vary dramatically, they have stronger and more chaotic magnetic fields, and they can produce powerful stellar winds and jets. All of these fade as a star ages and becomes more placid.

Earth's magnetic field acts like an invisible shield, protecting our planet from harmful cosmic radiation that would otherwise strip away our atmosphere and make life nearly impossible. Unlike Mars, which lost most of its magnetic protection and now faces constant bombardment from space particles, Earth has maintained this critical defence system for billions of years.

Chinese scientists have developed a remarkable machine that could revolutionize how humans build structures on the Moon. The device works like a 3D printer powered by concentrated sunlight, turning lunar soil (known as regolith) into strong construction bricks without needing any materials from Earth.

The coming week offers a chance to see a close pass of the two brightest planets in the sky.

The evolution of Earth's atmosphere is a major area of study. It's primal atmosphere consisted of hydrogen and helium accumulated from the solar nebula. That atmosphere was lost to space, replaced by the products of volcanic outgassing and asteroid and comet impacts. Eventually, free oxygen accumulated and the planet's atmosphere began to appear more like the current atmosphere. That took billions of years.

Understanding the growth and evolution of galaxies is a critical part of cosmology. We know that massive galaxies like our own Milky Way grew over time by cannibalizing and merging with smaller satellite galaxies. That could be what's happening right now with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, as they're being tidally disrupted by the Milky Way.

Ingenuity marked a number of milestones in space exploration. Arguably most importantly, it proved that powered flight was possible on another planet. However, it did have some limitations, such as being tied to the Perseverance rover and there only being one copy of the helicopter itself. AV Inc, one of the sub-contractors for Ingenuity, hopes to fix those problems with a proposed new mission called Skyfall that would involve six helicopters and no rover.

We live in an age of exoplanet discovery, and have discovered several thousand planets orbiting distant stars. These discoveries hold important lessons about planetary formation and solar system architecture. But we're also discovering a growing number of rogue planets, also called free-floating planets. These planets aren't gravitationally bound to any star. What can they teach us?

In June, technicians at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center began the crucial process of installing the Solar Array Sun Shield aboard the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This shield comprises six panels covered in solar cells that will provide the observatory with power while keeping its instruments cool throughout its mission. This marked the completion of the telescope's outer section, which was followed by thermal vacuum and electronic systems testing of its core section to ensure that the observatory can survive in the harsh environment of space.

They are known as Little Red Dots, or LRDs. We find them in deep field images of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and they remain a bit of a mystery. But a new study finds that they are not super-Eddington objects, so while they are unusual, they don't break the known rules of astrophysics.

A billion things had to go just right for Earth to become the life-supporting world it is today. Our planet is just the right distance from the right type of star. It has a hot, convective core that generates its protective shield. And early in its history, it was the recipient of organic molecules and water that shepherded Earth towards habitability. Without impacts from both rocky and icy Solar System bodies, Earth wouldn't have received these materials, and it wouldn't be the planet it is today.

Astronauts exploring the Moon will need all the help they can get, and scientists have spent lots of time and plenty of money coming up with different systems to do so. Two of the critical needs of any long-term lunar mission are food and oxygen, both of which are expensive to ship to the Moon from Earth. So, a research team from the Technical University of Munich spent some of their time analyzing the effectiveness of using local lunar resources to build a photobioreactor (PBR), the results of which were recently published in a paper in Acta Astronautica.

What do extreme icy moons in the Solar System and unruly water behavior have to do with each other? That's what scientists at University of Sheffield in England wanted to know. So, they simulated conditions at Europa and Enceladus in the lab. Europa orbits Jupiter and Enceladus circles Saturn. Both have frozen surfaces and internal oceans of salty water. That water plays a huge role in resurfacing and reshaping these icy moons. That process is called cryovolcanism and it shows that water behaves much differently "out there" than it does here on Earth, where it freezes below 0 C and boils above 100 C.

Sometimes the easiest way to understand the physics of a phenomenon is to make a physical model of it. But how do you make a model of a system as large as, say, a protoplanetary disc? One technique, suggested in a recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the University of Greifswald, would be familiar to any grade schooler who took a science class - spin water around in a circle really fast.

While NASA maintains the lead in human space exploration, other nations have already begun their own projects. Take the China National Space Agency for example, with their CLEP, or Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. If you have any doubts about the objectives of the program, just check out their logo: a stylized crescent moon with two footprints in the middle.