Space News & Blog Articles

There are already tens of thousands of pieces of large debris in orbit, some of which pose a threat to functional satellites. Various agencies and organizations have been developing novel solutions to this problem, before it turns into full-blown Kessler Syndrome. But many of them are reliant on understanding what is going on with the debris before attempting to deal with it. Gaining that understanding is hard, and failure to do so can cause satellites attempting to remove the debris to contribute to the problem rather than alleviating it. To help solve that conundrum, a new paper from researchers at GMV, a major player in the orbital tracking market in Europe, showcases a new algorithm that can use ground-based telescopes to try figure out how the debris is moving before a deorbiter gets anywhere near it.

(This is Part 4 of a series on primordial black holes. Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!)

The hunt is on for terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones, and some of the most promising candidates were discovered almost a decade ago about 40 light-years from Earth. The TRAPPIST-1 system contains seven terrestrial planets similar to Earth, and four of them may be in the habitable zone. The star is a dim red dwarf, so the habitable zone is close to the star, and so are the planets. For that reason, astronomers expect them to be tidally-locked to the star.

In 2017, astronomers using the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed the presence of seven rocky planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an M-type red dwarf star located about 39 light-years from Earth. What made the system especially intriguing was that three of these planets orbited within (or straddled) the system's habitable zone (HZ): TRAPPIST-1d, e, and f. Since then, scientists have been busy conducting follow-up observations of this system to learn as much as possible about its seven planets and whether they could be habitable.

Astronomers have found a unique blast coming from a distant supermassive black hole (SMBH). The SMBH is in a barred spiral galaxy about 135 million light-years away named NGC 3783. The Hubble recently imaged this face-on galaxy, showing its beautiful spiral arms and its center, tightly-packed with shining stars.

Supernovae aren't one of the JWST's main science themes, but the perceptive telescope is full of surprises. Recently, it pinpointed a single star in a galaxy when the Universe was only about 730 million years old. It wasn't just any random star; this one was a supernovae responsible for a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected back in March, 2025.