Astronomers have spotted a heart in the cosmos — not Cupid's doing, but a dying star shedding its layers — just in time for Valentine's Day.
A composite shot showing the liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 and the landing of the Falcon booster, 1101, at the new recovery site, Landing Zone 40, during NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now
Flying in the face of superstition, NASA and SpaceX conducted a smooth countdown and launch of three astronauts and a cosmonaut to begin the latest, long-duration mission to the International Space Station on Friday, Feb. 13.
SpaceX's Crew-12 astronaut mission will dock with the short-staffed International Space Station this afternoon (Feb. 14), and you can watch the off-Earth action live.
Ten years ago, humanity detected its first gravitational wave. On 14 January 2025, we detected the clearest one yet and it’s teaching us new things about the fundamental laws governing our universe.
The universe was supposed to take its time building the largest structures in existence. Galaxy clusters, containing hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies bound together by gravity and immersed in enormous pools of superheated gas, should require billions of years to assemble. Standard models predict these monsters couldn’t possibly form in the universe’s early childhood.
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Watch the docking operations of Crew-12 to the International Space Station (ISS), which took place on 14 February 2026 at 21:15 CET. The docking is followed by the hatch opening and the welcome remarks by the astronauts already present in the ISS.
Scientists have named two systems of colliding supermassive black holes after Lord of the Rings locations, Gondor and Rohan.
Cosmic rays, or astroparticles, are a means through which astronomers can explore the Universe. These charged particles, which are mostly protons and the nuclei of atoms stripped of their electrons, travel through space at close to the speed of light. By tracing them back to their sources, scientists can learn more about the forces that have shaped the Solar System and the Milky Way galaxy at large. When cosmic rays reach Earth, most are deflected by Earth's magnetosphere, but some manage to penetrate our atmosphere and reach the surface.
A mysterious object has caused a long-lasting and extreme dimming of a distant star, but is this object a 'failed star' brown dwarf, or an exceptionally massive super-Jupiter exoplanet?
After an inauspicious debut, Paul Giamatti's space pirate has emerged as a villain to be reckoned with on 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.'
If you're a fan of Lego Star Wars and are excited for The Mandalorian and Grogu, you'll want to build Walmart's exclusive New Republic X-Wing Starfighter set.
YouTube's superstar serves up a disturbing indie thriller bathed in blood for his directorial debut
One to orbit, one to the moon.
We take a look at the best (and worst) places to ski in the solar system, logistics aside.
The universe is a big place, and tracking down some of the more interesting parts of it is tricky. Some of the most interesting parts of it, at least from a physics perspective, are merging black holes, so scientists spend a lot of time trying to track those down. One of the most recent attempts to do so was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. While they didn’t find any clear-cut evidence of continuous gravitational waves from merging black hole systems, they did manage to point out plenty of false alarms, and even disprove some myths about ones we thought actually existed.
An annular eclipse crosses windswept remote Antarctica, heralding the first eclipse season of 2026.
Eclipses don't happen at random — they arrive in pairs, on schedule, and 2026 brings two spectacular seasons to prove it.
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Watch the highlights of the launch of ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew-12. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA, on Friday 13 February 2026 at 10:15 GMT/11:15 CET (5:15 local time).
SpaceX launched NASA's Crew-12 mission with a quartet of astronauts aboard Crew Dragon Freedom today (Feb. 13), bound for an eight-month stint on the International Space Station.
As more satellite megaconstellations continue to be launched, researchers are exploring the odds people could be struck by falling debris from reentering spacecraft.
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