Space News & Blog Articles

Venus is often called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similarities in size, mass, and composition. Both are rocky worlds that formed around the same time in the inner Solar System however, despite these similarities, Venus evolved into a world vastly different from Earth, with surface temperatures around 465°C, crushing atmospheric pressure 90 times greater than Earth’s and thick clouds containing sulphuric acid circling the planet. These dramatic differences between two such similar planets make Venus a fascinating subject for planetary scientists to study.

What new methods can be employed to help astronomers distinguish the light from an exoplanet and its host star so the former’s atmosphere can be better explored? This is what a recent study accepted to Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated how a novel and proposed telescopic instrument that could be capable of characterizing exoplanet atmospheres in new and exciting ways. This study has the potential to help scientists develop novel tools for examining exoplanets and whether they could possess life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it.

Type 1a supernovae are used as standard candles in the cosmic distance ladder. These energetic explosions occur when a white dwarf, an extremely dense stellar remnant, is in a binary pair with another star. The companion could be anything from a main sequence star like our Sun, to a red giant, even another white dwarf.

NASA is preparing to send crewed missions to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo Era over fifty years ago. With the success of Artemis I, which sent an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a circumlunar flight and set a new distance record for a crew-capable spacecraft, NASA is gearing up for Artemis II. This mission, which NASA is now targeting for no sooner than February 5th, 2026 (and no later than April), will transport a four-person crew around the Moon without landing and return them home ten days later. The announcement was made during a news conference on September 23rd at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC).

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has provided stunning views using its sophisticated suite of infrared instruments and spectrometers. The latest images reveal numerous impressive features in the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive and active star-forming region in the Milky Way. By combining data from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Webb captured Sgr B2 in multiple wavelengths, providing a contrasting view that showcases its massive stars and glowing cosmic dust in unprecedented detail.

What can auroras on a rogue planet teach astronomers about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the atmospheric composition of a nearby rogue planet, including its atmospheric temperature and auroras. This study has the potential to help astronomers better understand rogue planets, along with additional planetary atmospheric formation and evolutionary traits.

Mars, often called the Red Planet due to its rusty iron oxide covered surface, is Earth's smaller, colder neighbour. Orbiting the Sun at an average distance of 228 million kilometres, Mars shares remarkable similarities with Earth; a 24.6 hour day, polar ice caps, seasons driven by a 25.2 degree axial tilt, and evidence of ancient rivers and lakes that once flowed across its surface. Yet Mars today is a harsh world with a thin atmosphere just 1% the density of Earth's, average temperatures of -63°C, and no liquid water on its surface. It has an incredibly thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide (95%) which is so tenuous that liquid water cannot exist on the surface, yet it’s still thick enough to generate global dust storms.

The search for extraterrestrial life may soon get a revolutionary new tool which is no bigger than a soft drink can. A team of Dutch scientists are developing the (Origin of) Life Marker Chip (LMCOOL), a device that could detect signs of life on distant worlds. The LMCOOL is best described as a tiny yet complete laboratory in the form of a computer chip. This device is being developed by a Dutch consortium led by TU Delft, with researcher Jurriaan Huskens and his team working to make the optical sensor particularly sensitive for the required biomarkers.

Tumbleweeds offer iconic visual depictions of desolate landscapes. Though typically associated with the American West, the most common type of tumbleweed actually originated in Europe, and is known scientifically as salsola targus, or more commonly as Russian thistle. So its only fitting that a team led by European scientists has some up with an idea based on the tumbleweed’s unique properties that could one day have groups of them exploring Mars.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed some amazing things about the Universe. From the earliest galaxies and planet-forming disks to characterizing exoplanet atmospheres, there is virtually no corner of the cosmos that Webb has not observed in extremely high resolution. This includes the Solar System, where Webb has used its sophisticated infrared instruments and spectrometers to provide the most detailed images ever taken of Jupiter, Saturn, the ice giants, and smaller objects like Dimorphos and the latest cosmic interloper detected, 3I/ATLAS.

Radio astronomy began in the 1930s when Karl Jansky, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, accidentally discovered radio waves coming from the Milky Way. He was investigating sources of interference in transatlantic radio communications, no-one expected this to be the birth of radio astronomy. The finding opened an entirely new window on the universe, one that could peer through clouds, dust and observe phenomena invisible to optical telescopes. The field really took off after World War II when surplus military radar equipment became available to scientists with major discoveries following rapidly from pulsars to quasars, the cosmic microwave background radiation and the detailed structure of galaxies. Today's radio telescopes, from giant single dishes like the 500 metre FAST telescope in China to vast interferometer arrays like the Square Kilometre Array, continue to revolutionise our understanding of the universe.

Rocket propulsion technology has evolved from ancient Chinese gunpowder filled bamboo tubes that shot off into opposing armies to the powerful engines of Saturn V and more recently the Space Launch Vehicle and Falcon 9. The journey progressed through centuries of experimentation by pioneers like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth who laid the foundations for modern rocketry. The space race dramatically accelerated development of new technology, producing the liquid fuelled engines that launched Sputnik, sent humans to the Moon, and built the International Space Station.

Star formation is a fundamental physical process in our Universe. Stars light up the cosmos, and give rise to planets, some of which may support life. While humans have no doubt wondered about stars since prehistoric times, new technological tools like the Milky Way have taken our natural curiosity to a whole new level. Now we can peer inside obscured regions and detect young stars in their dusty cocoons.

Interference from human activity has always been a sticking point in astronomical observations. Radio astronomy is notoriously sensitive to unintentional interference - hence why there are “radio silent” zones near telescopes where cell phones are banned. But gravitational wave astronomy is affected to an even worse degree than radio astronomy, according to a new paper pre-published on arXiv by Reed Essick of the University of Toronto, and it’s not clear there’s much we can do about it.

The heliosphere is a giant bubble created by the Sun, extending far beyond Neptune's orbit and out into interstellar space. Voyager 1 crossed the boundary of the heliosphere (known as the heliopause) in August 2012 and Voyager 2 followed later in November 2018. They were 119 astronomical units from the Sun at the time, that’s 119 times further from the Sun than Earth. It protects us from dangerous levels of radiation and without it, life on Earth would be unlikely to have evolved.

Mysteries abound in the Solar System. Though it can sometimes seem like we've learned a lot, you can pick any object in the Solar System and quickly come up with unanswered questions. That's certainly true of tiny Mercury.

What can exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars teach scientists about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study submitted to the American Astronomical Society journals hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the possibility of exo-Titans, exoplanets with atmospheres comprised of nitrogen and methane like Saturn’s moon Titan, orbiting M-dwarf stars, which are smaller and cooler than our Sun. this study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars and whether they could possess life as we know it.

Thanks to missions that have been exploring the Red Planet since the 1970s, it has been established that Mars was once a much different place than what we see there today. Instead of an extremely cold, extremely dry, and irradiated planet with a very thin atmosphere, Mars once has a warmer, denser atmosphere and flowing water on its surface. Between 4.2 and 3.7 billion years ago, the planet began to undergo a transition whereby its atmosphere was slowly tripped by solar wind, causing its water to escape into space, collect in the polar ice caps, and retreat underground.

What is the meaning of life? Even the best of us couldn’t hope to answer that question in a universe today article. But there are those who would try to “constrain” it, at least in terms of physics. A new paper from Pankaj Mehta of Boston University of Jané Kondev of Brandeis that was recently pre-published on arXiv looks at how the fundamental constants of physics might be applied to life as we know it - and even life as we don’t know it yet. Their idea doesn't necessarily give the answer to the ultimate question, but it does tie two seemingly disparate fields nicely together.

One of the JWST's most startling discoveries was that black holes were extremely massive in the early Universe, less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery defied explanation, since astrophysicists thought that it would take much more time for black holes to accrete so much mass. An explanation for this discrepancy may lie in a massive black hole observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Asteroids are rocky remnants from the early Solar System, chunks of stone and metal that range in size from pebbles to mountains. Most of them orbit peacefully in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but occasionally gravitational forces can nudge them toward Earth. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is almost 1,000 km across, while the one that likely killed the dinosaurs was roughly 10 km wide. Even relatively small asteroids can cause tremendous damage for example, the space rock that created Arizona's famous Meteor Crater was only about 45 metres across, yet it generated a crater just over 1km wide.