Space News & Blog Articles

President Trump has picked former Air Force colonel Matt Anderson to be second in command at NASA.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That truism, now known as the "Sagan standard" after science communication Carl Sagan, has been around in some form since David Hume first published it in the 1740s. But, with modern-day data collection, sometimes even extraordinary evidence isn't enough - it's how you interpret it. That's the argument behind a new pre-print paper by Luis Welbanks and their colleagues at Arizona State University and various other American institutions. They analyzed the data behind the recent claims of biosignature detection in the atmosphere of K2-18b and found that other non-biological interpretations could also explain the data.

Most astronomers agree that life is likely common throughout the Universe. While Earth is the only world known to have life, we know that life arose early on our world, and the building blocks of life, including amino acids and sugars, form readily. We also know there are countless worlds in the cosmos that might be home for life. But just because life is likely, that doesn't mean proving it will be easy. Many of the biosignatures we can observe can also have abiotic origins. So how can we be sure? One way is to compare our observations of a habitable world with other worlds in the system.

Every time this doomed star plunges through a supermassive black hole's accretion disk, it loses orbital energy and triggers a burst of X-rays.

Rocket Lab has signed a contract to launch its new Neutron rocket on a test flight that will advance the U.S. Air Force's point-to-point cargo transportation concept.

The lavish galactic saga of "Foundation" returns to Apple TV+ on July 11, starring Lee Pace, Jared Harris, and Lou Llobell.

The spiral galaxy NGC 3596 is viewed face-on in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image that incorporates six different wavelengths of light.

A perfect time to explore the lunar maria.

File photo a a Falcon 9 prior to a Starlink satellite delivery mission. Image: SpaceX.

SpaceX is preparing for first Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force of the month, after previously scrubbing the flight nearly a week ago.

We tend to think of habitability in terms of individual planets and their potential to host life. But barring outliers like rogue planets with internal heating or icy moons with subsurface oceans created by tidal heating, it's exoplanet/star relationships that generate habitability, not individual planets. New research emphasizes that fact.

Astronomers have caught a black hole far from the center of its galaxy ripping a star to shreds — offering for the first time evidence of a rogue supermassive black hole in action.

A first-of a-kind space weather "tabletop" exercise has revealed major weaknesses in America's preparedness for major solar storms.

Week in images: 05-09 May 2025

The best solar telescopes suitable for the next solar eclipse.

A new image from Europe's Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite shows the huge Antarctic iceberg A-23A stuck 45 miles (73 kilometers) off the coast of South Georgia Island.

I think we know who's supplying the c(r)atering for this dance party.

Small but mighty, the ZWO Seestar S30 is an affordable, portable instrument that's great for observing and imaging deep-sky targets.

The brilliant blue-white star lighting up the red nebula Sh2-46 hints at a dynamic and possibly fleeting encounter that could reshape the nebula's appearance over time.

Image: Part of the Italian island of Sardinia is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

The Soviet Venus probe Kosmos 482 is expected to fall to Earth on May 10, but exactly when and where remains unknown.

Over the past decade or so, astronomers have speculated about the characteristics of rogue planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. These "free-floating" worlds don't orbit stars, but instead roam the spaceways. They're hard to spot with current technology, but the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) will be a perfect instrument to find them and give insights into the history and features they may have in common with Solar System worlds.