Space News & Blog Articles

Lucy is already well on its way to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. But that doesn't mean that it can’t make some improvements to its trajectory along the way. A new paper suggests it might be possible to nudge Lucy into a slightly different orbit, allowing it to pass an as-yet-undiscovered asteroid sometime during its exploration of the L5 cloud of Trojan around Jupiter. If completed, it could lend an entirely new research target to Lucy’s repertoire and further define the differences between the two Trojan clouds.

A team of astronomers have achieved a milestone in stellar physics by using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer beneath the surface activity of TRAPPIST-1, one of the most famous exoplanet host stars. Their study has revealed the hidden magnetic features on this volatile red dwarf, opening new possibilities for understanding both stellar behaviour and the habitability of nearby worlds.

As a child, I remember gazing up at the stars and dreaming of spacecraft journeying to distant worlds, those classic images of rockets blasting off toward unknown frontiers filled my imagination. But a mission to a black hole? That seemed beyond even the wildest science fiction. These stellar corpses were the stuff of theoretical physics books back then, mysterious objects so extreme that they devoured light itself. The idea that we might actually send something there, even a device smaller than a paperclip, makes you realise we're living in an era where the impossible is slowly becoming possible.

Thanks to the development of reusable rockets, rideshare programs, and other key innovations, the cost of sending payloads to space has steadily dropped in recent years. As a result, access to space is increasing for commercial space companies, universities, research institutes, and non-profits. To facilitate this trend, NASA has selected six companies through its Launch Services Program, which were awarded Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare Launch Services (VADR) contracts.

During the early days of our Solar System, giant impacts were common occurrences. Earth likely experienced such an impact that created our Moon, and Mars may have been struck by objects that created its asymmetrical surface features. But what about Venus?

3D printing is going to be a critical technology in space exploration, both for its ability to create almost any object, but also because it can utilize in-situ resources, at least in part. However, the more of those space resources are used in a print, the more the mechanical properties change from that on Earth, leading to problems with tensile or compressive strength. But a new paper from researchers at Concordia University hit a new milestone of how much lunar regolith can be used in a mixed feedstock for additive manufacturing, making it possible to use even more locally sourced material, and saving more launch cost, than ever before.

In 2024, an international team of astronomers launched the CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey (CAPERS), a program that would use data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to identify galaxies at "Cosmic Dawn." This cosmological period took place less than one billion years after the Big Bang and is when the first galaxies in the Universe formed. In a recent study, the CAPERS team confirmed the existence of a black hole at the center of a galaxy (designated CAPERS-LRD-z9) roughly 13.3 billion light-years away.

In 1964, astronomers discovered the first black hole. It's called Cygnus X-1 and the evidence for its existence was discovered by x-ray detectors on a sub-orbital sounding rocket. Cygnus X-1 is about 7,300 light-years away and has about 21 solar masses. Since then, astronomers have discovered increasingly more massive black holes, including supermassive black holes (SMBH) at the heart of large galaxies like ours.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed 3I/ATLAS, only the third known object from outside our Solar System to visit our neighbourhood. This interstellar interloper is putting on quite a show as it approaches the Sun, revealing secrets about visitors from the depths of space.

Don’t let the brilliant Moon deter you from enjoying the best meteor shower of the year: the 2025 Perseids.

White dwarfs are remnants of main sequence stars like our Sun that have depleted their hydrogen. Their lives of fusion have come to an end, and they'll simmer with residual heat for trillions of years. Their lifespans are longer than the current age of the Universe.

The resources tucked away in asteroids promise to provide the building blocks of humanity’s expansion into space. However, accessing those resources can prove tricky. There’s the engineering challenge of landing a spacecraft on one of the low-gravity targets and essentially dismantling it while still remaining attached to it. But there’s also a challenge in finding ones that make economic sense to do that to, both in terms of the amount of material they contain as well as the ease of getting to them from Earth. A much easier solution might be right under our noses, according to a new paper from Jayanth Chennamangalam and his co-authors - mine the remnants of asteroids that hit the Moon.

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.