Astronomy

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission shows us a rare, cloud-free view of Iceland captured on 17 May 2025.

In a universe of a billion galaxies, Earth is the world known to have life. If we're a common example of what happens in the Universe, then our location can tell us something about habitability. A new study is about to flip everything we thought we knew about habitability on its head, examining the potential for life in exotic environments, such as rogue planets, water worlds, and tidally locked planets, and calculate how habitable they would be compared to Earth. As we learn more about these other worlds, if they are more habitable, it can give new predictions.

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For half a century, the European Space Agency (ESA) has been serving Europe as its space agency and inspiring its citizens. On 30 May 1975, the ESA Convention was signed by 10 founding Member States and has since now expanded to 23 Member States, three Associate Members, four Cooperating States and a Cooperation Agreement with Canada. This anniversary year provides the opportunity to reflect not only on ESA’s past achievements, but even more so on its future perspectives.

Just when astronomers think they're starting to understand stellar activity, something strange grabs their attention. That's the case with a newly discovered stellar object called ASKAP J1832-0911. It lies about 15,000 light-years from Earth and belongs to a class of stellar objects called "long-period radio transients." That means it emits radio waves that vary in their intensity on a schedule of only 44 minutes per cycle. It does the same thing in X-ray intensities, which is the first time anybody's seen such a thing coupled with long-period radio transits.

Sixteen of 19 astronaut candidates named on May 29, 1980, and two European trainees as payload specialists pose for photographers in the briefing room in the public affairs facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A supernova remnant (SNR) discovered by astrophysicist Miroslav Filipović of Western Sydney University displays an astonishingly spherical shape.

Tiny bone fragments from Alaska suggest birds started breeding and nesting in the Arctic 30 million years earlier than previously thought

Tiny bone fragments from Alaska suggest birds started breeding and nesting in the Arctic 30 million years earlier than previously thought

The history books say Europeans brought leprosy to the Americas, but analysis of ancient DNA reveals that a form of the disease was present in Argentina and Canada much earlier

The history books say Europeans brought leprosy to the Americas, but analysis of ancient DNA reveals that a form of the disease was present in Argentina and Canada much earlier

SpaceX is targeting a whopping 170 orbital liftoffs in 2025, which would shatter the record the company set just last year.

We've been gazing at the Moon for a long time, yet it's still mysterious. We've sent numerous orbiters and landers to our satellite, and even brought some of it back to our labs. Those rocks only presented more mysteries, in some ways. Lunar rocks are magnetic, yet the Moon doesn't have a magnetosphere. How did this happen?

Lunar maria or 'seas' formed when lava flooded impact basins billions of years ago.

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is commonly cited as being a critical step towards a sustainable human presence in space, especially on the Moon. Just how crucial it is, and how much its by-products will affect other uses of the Moon, is still up for debate. A new paper from Evangelia Gkaravela and Hao Chen of the Stevens Institute of Technology dives into those questions and comes up with a promising answer - ISRU is absolutely worth it, if we can control the waste products.

We step inside the TARDIS to rank every Doctor so far, from William Hartnell through to Ncuti Gatwa.

Oil industry opposition to a planned OSHA rule to limit heat deaths comes as oil and gas workers face increasingly dangerous conditions

NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi spoke with students from the International Space Station on May 20, 2025, in a behind-the-camera view.

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British climbers recently reached the top of Mount Everest in record time. They inhaled xenon gas before the trip. But was that the decisive factor?

NASA's Perseverance rover has marked a milestone with a spectacular new selfie, and a surprise visitor.