Astronomy

What is going on with this galaxy?

South Korea just laid out its long-term space exploration road map, which features the planned construction of a moon base two decades from now.

Scientists have grown algae in bioplastic habitats under Mars-like conditions, a step that could bring long-term space colonization closer to reality.

Find the locations of the five landing zones considered as the setting for humanity's first steps on another world.

Macquarie University astronomers have tracked an extreme planet's orbital decay, confirming it is spiraling toward its star in a cosmic death dance that could end in three possible ways. It could cross the Roche line and be torn apart, it could plunge to destruction in its star, or it could be stripped all the way down to a rocky core.

Atmospheric escape shapes an exoplanet's future. Earth's exosphere is extended and detectable due to ocean-related atmospheric escape. If we can detect the same features on an exoplanet, it could suggest oceans and habitability. But we need to build the Habitable Worlds Observatory first.

Trans-Neptunian Objects reside in the distant Solar System as remnants of the System's early days. They follow unusual orbits and range in colour from reds to greys. New research uses their colours and orbits to show how a stellar flyby can account for their modern-day orbits.

Supernovas, kilonovas, gamma-ray bursts... oh my! The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will uncover 100,000 of these explosions and many more powerful and violent cosmic events.

All eyes are on the newly discovered interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, currently inbound to the inner solar system. Initial observations have revealed that it's rich in water ice, and it's believed that it originated from the Milky Way's thick disk, ancient stars that orbit above and below the galactic plane. This could mean that 3I/ATLAS is billions of years older than the Solar System, the oldest comet ever discovered. It should reveal more as it heats up and outgasses as it gets closer to the Sun.

The moon's crescent limb will cloak and uncover stars from the iconic cluster before sunrise.

On Episode 169 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by JPL Chief Engineer Emeritus Rob Manning to look back at the Mariner 4 Mars mission 60 years later.

When we leave Earth, we have to bring everything with us, from the air we breathe to the food we eat. For example, a 6-person, 1000-day mission might require 108 tonnes of food. In a new paper, researchers suggest ways that synthetic biology could allow us to convert local resources, regenerate resources in closed-loop environments, protect explorers from radiation, and create custom medicine on demand to support long-term space exploration.

From "Star Wars" film sets to baboons in Saudi Arabia, here's how to experience the "eclipse of the century" in style on Aug. 2, 2027.

Why isn't this ant a big sphere?

Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket now has a payload for its second-ever flight —NASA's ESCAPADE Mars mission.

The new TRACERS mission will track magnetic reconnection that drives particles down into Earth's atmosphere when space weather turns bad.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Friday, July 18, 2025.

Very massive stars (VMSs)have had a massive impact on the formation of our universe. However, there aren’t very many of them, with only around 20 known specimens in the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud. Even observing those is difficult for the current generation of telescopes, which is where an unexpected technological champion might play a role. According to a new paper by Fabrice Martins of CNRS and a group of European and American researchers, the upcoming Habitable World Observatory (HWO) might be our most useful tool when it comes to finding these elusive giants.

Astronomers have discovered an object at the edge of the solar system that is locked in a strange rhythmic dance with the ice giant Neptune.

Two teams of astronomers have simultaneously discovered a strange, spinning dead star that seems to defy our current understanding of both neutron stars and white dwarfs.