New Scientist Space - Space Headlines

A fire at Vistra Energy's Moss Landing battery storage facility in California destroyed thousands of lithium batteries – and a significant amount of the state's clean energy storage capacity

A flying robot the size of a postage stamp can hover for up to 15 minutes without breaking, and it can perform acrobatic manoeuvres

Global average precipitation in 2024 may have broken the previous record set in 1998, as rising temperatures boosted the amount of moisture in the atmosphere

Now that the US Supreme Court has decided that a law banning TikTok is constitutional, the platform is set to shut down in the US on 19 January – but Trump could still save it

ELIZA is famous as a rudimentary artificial intelligence and the first ever chatbot, but versions found online today are actually knock-offs because the original computer code was lost – until now

Blue Origin and SpaceX both launched rockets on 16 January, but while Jeff Bezos' company saw a launch success with New Glenn, Elon Musk's Starship exploded. What does this mean for the future of the space industry?

The animals' teeth are constantly being worn down due to their tough diet. But rather than losing calcium this way, they could be recycling it to help grow their teeth back up to size

Trained pianists who hit a plateau improved their finger speed after a half-hour training session with a device that moves their fingers for them

Researchers saw a chain of atoms in a quantum simulator go from being magnetic to not magnetic at all, the first time such a change has ever been seen in one spatial dimension

In the opening to Adrian Tchaikovsky's science fiction novel Alien Clay, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, our hero wakes from years of space travel to a terrifying new reality

The author of the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club on the science that lies behind his novel Alien Clay, set on a prison planet where the biology is very different to that on Earth

Wildfires and fossil fuel burning in 2024 contributed to the biggest annual rise in atmospheric CO2 levels ever recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii

As apparent acts of sabotage cut undersea data cables around the world, NATO held its first demonstration of a project to quickly reroute crucial communications to satellite internet

By using MRI brain scans to identify regions linked to hand movements and sensations, researchers were able to restore a sense of touch to two people with paralysis – and one was able to control and feel a robot arm using his thoughts

Droughts lasting multiple years are becoming more common and extreme around the globe, expanding by about 50,000 square kilometres annually

A jawbone found in a Moroccan mine was thought to be a novel species of marine reptile from the Cretaceous period, but other researchers believe it is probably a fake

A reader is worried about socialising without the confidence boost she gets from alcohol. But studies show that the chemical isn’t necessary for easing our social inhibitions, our columnist David Robson advises

After delays and false starts, Jeff Bezos's firm Blue Origin has reached orbit with its first launch of the New Glenn rocket, though attempts to land the first stage at sea were unsuccessful

An AI trained on motion capture recordings can help robots smoothly imitate human actions, such as dancing, walking and throwing punches

Rebutting the serotonin theory of depression exposed an important gap in our knowledge. But Joanna Moncrieff's new book Chemically Imbalanced takes too narrow a view of how we should react