Space News & Blog Articles

Earth's atmosphere pulses in sync with the sun's fiery outbursts, indicating it is more sensitive to solar activity than previously thought, according to new research.

"Shiver with antici… pation!" as those over-sexed aliens from the planet Transexual celebrate their Golden Anniversary in 2025.

India now plans to launch astronauts to Earth orbit for the first time no sooner than 2027, after completing a series of uncrewed flight tests slated to begin later this year.

The moon spent a few million years as a volcanic wasteland, covered with ongoing eruptions that spewed from mountains and even from the ground itself.

For the first time, two spacecraft in orbit were aligned in formation with millimetre precision and maintained their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground.

The activities to assemble the European Space Agency’s Plato mission are progressing well now that 24 of the spacecraft’s 26 cameras have been installed. Once in space, Plato will use its many eyes to survey a very large area of the sky and hunt for terrestrial planets. The spacecraft’s supporting element is also coming together in parallel.

Thanks largely to Copernicus Sentinel-1, scientists have discovered that a glacier in Antarctica is rapidly siphoning ice from neighbouring flows – at a pace never before seen. Until now, researchers believed that this process of ‘ice piracy’ in Antarctica took hundreds or even thousands of years, but these latest findings clearly demonstrate that this isn’t always the case.

Matthew Anderson gives remarks to introduce Jared Isaacman during the 2024 Space Force Association’s Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. Image: Will Robinson-Smith/Spaceflight Now

Matthew Anderson, the chief growth officer for the Space Force Association (SFA), an independent nonprofit with the mission of “advocating for and supporting the U.S. Space Force,” was nominated on Tuesday by President Donald Trump for the NASA Deputy Administrator position.

The Fermi Paradox presents us with a striking contradiction: despite the high probability of numerous civilizations existing throughout the Universe, we've encountered no evidence or communication from any alien intelligence. A new paper just published calculates that we should have a 99% chance of detecting at least one signal from another civilisation—assuming they survive for several hundred years and could be distributed anywhere across the Milky Way galaxy. This calculation further deepens the mystery of our apparent cosmic solitude.

On May 7th, the Japanese space exploration company ispace announced that its HAKUTO-R RESILIENCE lander entered lunar orbit after completing a 9-minute thruster burn. It's now in a stable lunar orbit, and operators will spend the next month testing and preparing for its landing attempt on June 5. This is the company's second attempt at landing on the Moon, after the first attempt crashed in 2023. It's carrying a micro-rover and several science experiments.

NASA’s Psyche mission is on its way to explore a metal-rich asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. All was going well since its launch in October 2023 until nasa announced a decrease in fuel pressure for the propulsion system. It uses a solar electric propulsion system, generating thrust with four electric ion engines that expel xenon ions, giving the spacecraft a gentle nudge in the opposite direction. It has been firing its thrusters continuously since May 2024, but in April 2025, engineers detected the pressure drop. Thankfully they have redundancy built in but are still troubleshooting the issue.

Elon Musk explained the rather depressing fate of life on Earth to Fox News host Jesse Waters, who had asked him why humanity should go to Mars.

The most massive stars in the Milky Way contain one hundred times more mass than the Sun, even more in some cases. These O-type stars are extremely hot, luminous, and blue, and often die in supernova explosions. Astrophysicists want to know how they get so big, and a simple household chemical might hold the answer.

A new study suggests trees in the forest can access ancient memories and "talk" to each other hours before a solar eclipse.

When ISS astronauts return home, they have a hot ride back to Earth's surface. It's been that way since the beginning of human spaceflight to orbital space and beyond. The incoming vehicle uses friction with Earth's atmosphere to slow down to a safe landing speed. The "hot ride" part comes because that friction builds up high temperatures on the spacecraft's "skin". Without protection, the searing heat of atmospheric re-entry could destroy it. This same heating happens to incoming meteoroids as they whip through Earth's atmosphere.

A combination of X-ray from NASA's Chandra observatory and radio data indicates that a galactic "fracture" was likely caused by a special neutron star called a pulsar.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will prepare for new leadership, as current director Laurie Leshin has announced that she's stepping down from the role next month.

Bungie might be dropping a Marathon reboot on us this year, but Destiny 2 ain't going anywhere, and its content plans for 2025 and 2026 are enticing to say the least.

If astronomy has a Holy Grail, it's another habitable world. To find one, NASA is working with partners to develop the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). The HWO would be the first telescope built to detect Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars. China is building the Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES), and new research shows that by working together, HWO and CHES would amplify their results.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has found water vapor swirling in the air of a distant, boiling-hot alien planet, a new study reports.

Lockheed Martin officials handed over the "keys" to the Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft to NASA, marking the start of its processing for launch.