Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 21-25 April 2025

Our sun is wobbling, and this has a huge impact upon the regularity of many of Earth's meteor showers, according to a new study.

Take a look at the Moon through binoculars or a telescope and its clear that its been bombarded through history by space rocks. Some of the impacts are energetic enough that debris is ejected from the surface facer than the Moon’s escape velocity. Much of this rock finds its way to Earth and now, a team of researchers announce they have been simulating these events. They simulated asteroid impacts and tracked the debris that escaped the lunar surface and were surprised at just how much of the ejecta found its way to Earth.

An amateur astrophotographer has captured a stunningly detailed view of the spiral galaxy Messier 106, which is located 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici.

The new moon occurs April 27, and a day later Venus and Saturn will make a close approach to each other (known as a conjunction) in the predawn sky.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel-1 captured this radar image over French Guiana – home to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, where ESA’s Biomass mission is being prepared for liftoff on 29 April onboard a Vega-C rocket.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Fore Station on Thursday (April 24), carrying 28 Starlink satellites to orbit.

As scientists and space enthusiasts commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope's 35 years in orbit, the mission team joined in by delivering a fresh collection of awe-inspiring images.

Looking up at the night sky, it’s reasonable to believe that our Solar System is largely empty after all the only things easily visible are the planets. In reality its a cosmic shooting gallery and it’s just a matter of time before an asteroid slams into Earth. A team of scientists propose that space agencies develop a rapid-response flyby reconnaissance mission to reach potential asteroid threats within 2.5 years of detection.

Valleys on Mars suggest the Red Planet was once covered in flowing water — but it's still a mystery how that could have been.

The end of the long-running animated show puts Anakin Skywalker's downfall in a whole new perspective.

Telescopes can have more than one sensor. Those sensors can utilize some of the same infrastructure, like lenses and mirrors, and specialize in collecting different data. A good example of this is the Inouye Solar Telescope (IST). It is the largest solar telescope in the world, with a primary mirror diameter of 4 meters. It also has five separate instruments, four of which are currently in operation. The latest of these to come online is the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), which just collected its first light according to a press release by the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research, one of the project partners.

A NASA Mars orbiter recently spotted the Curiosity rover driving across the Red Planet's surface, capturing an unprecedented off-Earth action shot.

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the first atoms formed. The first light of what we now see as the cosmic microwave background was released, and the primordial hydrogen and helium grew cold and dark. The cosmos entered a dark age for about 100 million years until the first stars and galaxies started to form. You could say the rise of galaxies marked cosmic morning. But star formation didn't really kick into gear for another 2-3 billion years, during what astronomers call cosmic noon. This period can be difficult to observe, but a new study gives us an unprecedented view of this epoch.

Thirty-five years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth orbit.

Nobody knows it, but the universe has a secret smile, and it uses it only for Earth.

The Milky Way has more than 30 known satellite galaxies. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the largest and most well-known; other lesser-known ones, like the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, are also on the list. Astronomers think there are many more small satellites that are difficult to detect but essential in understanding the Milky Way. The Vera Rubin Observatory should help astronomers find many more of them.

Super-Earths can exist in wider orbits around their parent stars than was previously believed, suggesting these Earth-like exoplanets could be more common than we thought.

The three astronauts of China's Shenzhou 20 mission arrived at the nation's Tiangong space station today (April 24), about 6.5 hours after lifting off.

The first public look at Predator: Badlands has finally arrived, and it's safe to say this new entry is doubling down on the series' sci-fi worldbuilding.