Space News & Blog Articles

Scientists have known for a while that Mars currently lacks a magnetic field, and many blame that for its paltry atmosphere - with no protective shield around the planet, the solar wind was able to strip away much of the gaseous atmosphere over the course of billions of years. But, evidence has been mounting that Mars once had a magnetic field. Results from Insight, one of the Red Planet's landers, lend credence to that idea, but they also point to a strange feature - the magnetic field seemed to cover only the southern hemisphere, but not the north. A team from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics thinks they might know why - in a recent paper, they described how a fully liquid core in Mars could create a lopsided magnetic field like the one seen in Insight’s data.

NASA's oldest active astronaut has redefined traveling "home" for your birthday, landing from the International Space Station on the same day that he turned 70.

You never know when a central supermassive black hole is going to power up and start gobbling matter. Contrary to the popular view that these monsters are constantly devouring nearby stars and gas clouds, it turns out they spend part of their existence dormant and inactive. New observations from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft opened a window on the "turn on event" for one of these monsters in a distant galaxy.

In a recent paper, a team of researchers indicated that photosynthetic bacteria could exist just beneath the snow and ice around Mars' mid-latitudes. If true, this could be the most easily accessible place to look for present-day life on Mars.

The solar system is currently embedded deep within the Local Bubble, a region of relatively low density stretching for a thousand light-years across. It was carved millions of years ago by a chain of supernova explosions. And the evidence for it is right under our feet.

The best possible balance between magnification, size and build quality. The Lunt SunOculars 8x32 are the go-to solar binoculars for eclipses and sunspot viewing.

File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands in the launch position during sunset at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Image: SpaceX

America’s spy satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), is preparing to launch its third mission in eight days. The launch on Sunday, April 20, will feature another batch of satellites to support its proliferated architecture constellation in low Earth orbit.

On Easter Sunday (April 20), NASA's Lucy probe will zip past the asteroid Donaldjohanson, testing its science instruments on the space rock.

If you're a fan of XCOM and the Star Wars' Clone Wars era, you're in luck. Zero Company is coming in 2026.

On Episode 157 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik invite Chief Master Sergeant John Bentivegna to the podcast to discuss the Space Force.

New episode "Lux" reveals that characters talking directly to the audience was just the start.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit and two cosmonaut colleagues will return to Earth from the International Space Station this evening (April 19), and you can watch it live.

Using NASA's Perseverance rover to analyze Martian rocks, researchers suggest that Mars' complex volcanism might hold clues about the planet's ancient habitability.

Landing off the coast of the Bahamas offers SpaceX new rocket flight trajectories.

Russia's Alexey Ovchinin handed the keys of the International Space Station to Japanese spaceflyer Takuya Onishi in a change-of-command ceremony today (April 18).

NASA's PUNCH sun-studying mission has seen first light — and the team says all four instruments are indeed working as expected.

The Mandalorian's next chapter will return to theaters in 2026, and we're learning more about its characters and story.

According to a recent study by the non-profit Explore Titan, a nuclear-fission propulsion spacecraft could enable the first crewed mission to Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

In our neighborhood of the Milky Way, we see a region surrounding the solar system that is far less dense than average. But that space, that cavity, is a very irregular, elongated shape. What little material is left inside of this cavity is insanely hot, as it has a temperature of around a million Kelvin.

Astronomers have stumbled upon yet another ghostly galaxy that appears to be devoid of dark matter, the elusive stuff that makes up most of the material universe.

These solar binoculars offer lots of magnification for observing sunspots and solar eclipses, but their big size makes them a specialist purchase.