Astronomy

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft carrying Axiom-4 astronauts heads to the International Space Station.

The meteor shower radiant can be found in the constellation Bootes.

The fireball was bright enough to be spotted by a lightning-tracking satellite from orbit.

Week in images: 23-27 June 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Often framed as a boon for personal wellness, meditation helps us connect with and support others, too

The Mexican president said there is a "general review underway of the international laws that are being violated."

Surprising new work bucks 50 years of assumptions about the trade-offs between computation space and time

Close stellar encounters could change the structure of our planetary system, potentially dooming Earth or other worlds to oblivion

This San Antonio, Tex., lab takes biosecurity seriously. Suit up with its scientists and go behind the scenes of the science of vaccine creation.

For years, Robert Hunt convinced everyone he could that he was a NASA astronaut. The truth was anything but.

Culture editor Alison Flood rounds up the New Scientist Book Club's take on our latest read, a time-travelling romance

Culture editor Alison Flood rounds up the New Scientist Book Club's take on our latest read, a time-travelling romance

In this passage from near the opening of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are given an insight into how deep-space travel works in Adam Roberts’s universe

In this passage from near the opening of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are given an insight into how deep-space travel works in Adam Roberts’s universe

The author of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, on why, in a world awash with fictional dystopias, he set out to write the opposite

The author of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, on why, in a world awash with fictional dystopias, he set out to write the opposite

Asteroid 2024 YR4 made headlines earlier this year when its probability of impacting Earth in 2032 rose as high as 3%. While an Earth impact has now been ruled out, the asteroid’s story continues.

The final glimpse of the asteroid as it faded out of view of humankind’s most powerful telescopes left it with a 4% chance of colliding with the Moon on 22 December 2032.

The likelihood of a lunar impact will now remain stable until the asteroid returns to view in mid-2028. In this FAQ, find out why we are left with this lingering uncertainty and how ESA's planned NEOMIR space telescope will help us avoid similar situations in the future.

A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several institutions in Australia has found that a mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected last year originated not from a distant source, but from one circling the planet—a long-dead satellite. The team has posted a paper outlining their findings on the arXiv preprint server.

Space exploration enthusiasts tend to overlook the regulatory aspects of their desired goals. They focus on technologies and the science we can do with them rather than mundane things like property rights or environmental considerations. However, in the long run, those enthusiasts will have to grapple with all aspects of exploration programs as they begin to affect more and more of the public. With such foresight, various groups have started putting forward ideas for frameworks of how to holistically think about how to utilize the Moon, as that seems the most likely first stepping stone out to the wider solar system. A new paper from Ekaterina Seltikova and her colleagues at the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) and the University of Toronto puts forth one such framework, with a particular focus on how to develop a lunar economy that is open for everyone.