Astronomy

JWST observations of light sources before the first galaxies should have formed are raising new questions about our galactic origins

The lowdown on the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to repeal of the “endangerment” finding. Also, how did a juicy ketchup ingredient help create a starchy tuber?

A strange shift in Earth's rotation is making our days milliseconds shorter — and scientists are racing to understand why.

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This summer, a team of robots explored a simulated martian landscape in Germany, remotely guided by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. This marked the fourth and final session of the Surface Avatar experiment, a collaboration between ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to develop how astronauts can control robotic teams to perform complex tasks on the Moon and Mars.

The session introduced new levels of autonomy and complexity. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim operated two robots – ESA’s four-legged Spot and DLR’s humanoid Rollin’ Justin – to retrieve scattered sample containers and deliver them to a lander. Spot navigated the terrain autonomously, while Justin was guided through a mix of direct control and pre-set commands. This setup allowed Jonny to delegate tasks and focus on higher-level decisions, building on other sessions where robots required full teleoperation.

In a second scenario, ESA’s Interact rover transported DLR’s robot dog Bert to a cave entrance. After removing a boulder, Jonny deployed Bert, which then simulated a malfunction in one of its legs. Jonny had to retrain Bert’s walking algorithm in real time before it continued into the cave and detected signs of martian ice. This tested how operators respond to unexpected challenges and adapt robotic systems on the fly.

The robots are controlled from the International Space Station using a custom-built interface developed by ESA and DLR, combining a joystick and a haptic-feedback device. The interface allows switching between first-person view for immersive teleoperation and a top-down map for broader mission oversight. This flexibility lets the astronaut manage multiple robots efficiently, balancing direct control with strategic delegation.

Over four sessions, the Surface Avatar team has refined its approach to human-robot interaction, improving both teleoperation and task delegation to autonomous systems. The experiment has also helped to identify which tasks astronauts prefer to control directly and which can be safely handed over to robotic systems, offering valuable insight for future mission planning.

Read our blog to find out more.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 28 Starlink satellites from Florida's Space Coast early Monday morning (Aug. 4), then came back to Earth for a landing on a ship at sea.

But wait, before you build that moon casino we need to talk about a couple things. One, you really have to figure out how the roulette wheel is going to work in a low gravity environment. Second, we’re going to need you to keep the noise down.

In astronomy, larger distances are both a blessing and a curse. They can cause issues like longer communication times, which also requires more powerful equipment, and positioning uncertainty that can affect the outcomes of measurements, especially in the outer reaches of the solar system. However, they can also be useful for a specific type of measurement called interferometry, where two systems a far distance apart can provide accurate location measurements to a third system - the same principle that GPS uses. A new paper looks at potentially using the same technique to track deep space probes rather than cars on a freeway and finds that, while it is around the same accuracy level, it is able to provide that same location data for more than double the amount of time.

Why was this collision so strange?

Space weather imposes threats on everything from electrical grids to GPS navigation.

The magnitude 3.0 earthquake that shook the East Coast came nearly a year and a half after a magnitude 4.8 quake shocked New York City and its surroundings

With more countries looking to explore space, there is a rising hope that space is now more accessible for diverse participants.

The red supergiant star Antares will appear close to the waxing gibbous moon tonight.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of the blockchain platform Tron, and five other people to space on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025.

How can artificial intelligence (AI) be used to locate lunar pits and skylights, which are surface depressions and openings, respectively, that serve as entrances to lava caves and lava tubes? This is what a recent study published in Icarus hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated using machine learning algorithms to more efficiently identify pits and skylights on lunar volcanic regions (lunar maria) of the Moon. This study has the potential to help researchers develop new methods in identifying key surface features on planetary bodies that could aid in both robotic and human exploration.

New research on the samples collected by China's Chang'e-5 mission is revolutionizing our understanding of how the Moon cooled. A team led by Stephen M. Elardo, an Assistant Professor from the University of Florida, found that lava on the near side of the Moon likely came from a much shallower depth than previously thought, contradicting previous theories on how the Moon formed and evolved.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that our studies of the Moon have unlocked the mysteries of the universe.

NASA needs clear support from the White House if we want to win the new space race

A large lunar crater featured in the iconic 'Earthrise' photo has just helped the European JUICE spacecraft hone its alien-hunting instruments during a once-in-a-lifetime flyby.

Join us on a guided telescope tour of August's moon, featuring distinct targets for each of the four major lunar phases.