ESA Highlights 2025
The European Space Agency’s Swarm mission detected a large but temporary spike of high-energy protons at Earth’s poles during a geomagnetic storm in November. It did this not with the scientific instruments for measuring Earth’s magnetic field, but with its ‘star tracker’ positioning instruments – a first for the Swarm mission.
Air travellers will shrink their carbon footprint while reducing flight delays worldwide, thanks to a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA), satellite operator Viasat and aerospace company Boeing. Flights to test the space-based technology with new aviation standards from and to the USA and Europe took place in late October and early November.
A Falcon 9 stands ready for a Starlink mission at Cape Canaveral’s pad 40. File photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now.
SpaceX is set to launch another batch of 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low Earth orbit on its Falcon 9 rocket Thursday afternoon.
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.
A space telescope and AI teamed up to analyze a million galaxies and learn what triggers supermassive black holes the most.
Cyber Monday may be behind us, but don't despair, there are still a few last-minute binocular deals out there, and we've put together the best on offer.
Mind transfers, nanotech, and robotic innovations take center stage in this visionary 2026 book.
Rocket Lab has signed a contract to launch its new Neutron rocket on a test flight that will advance the U.S. Air Force's point-to-point cargo transportation concept.
Embark Studios' extraction shooter takes cues from sci-fi classics to establish a dark future, but its cautionary tale is more believable than most.
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.
Rocket Lab will launch a Korean disaster-monitoring satellite today (Dec. 10), and you can watch the action live.
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.
Something happened to the probe on the far side of the Red Planet.
Programmable matter mines swarm the U.S.S. Athena in this action-packed 4-minute preview
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.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 27 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Station in California on Dec. 10, 2025. It was the 160th Falcon 9 flight of the year.
Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was imaged in October as it crossed the galactic plane of the Milky Way.
The findings provide an answer to a planetary mystery that has bewildered scientists for nearly four decades.
Once completed, this telescope will help usher in a new era of astronomy.
"We might lose the ability to observe about 30% of the faintest galaxies. We are at the point of starting to be able to see details of exoplanet atmospheres, but if the sky gets brighter, we may not be able to see those details anymore."
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