Somewhere in the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, something wonky is happening. A few objects are orbiting differently from everything else, and we don’t know why. A popular hypothesis is that an unseen object called Planet Nine could be messing with these orbits; astronomers are avidly searching for this planet. But

The International Space Station (ISS) is about to place a call. But not just any old ISS call. It’s going to be via X-rays: the first test of NASA’s newly developed X-ray communication system, called XCOM. XCOM could revolutionise communications between Earth and far-flung spacecraft, being able to transfer gigabits per second. Think of how

Terrestrial organisms stuck on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) have survived 533 days in the vacuum, intense ultraviolet radiation, and extreme temperature variations of space. You know what that means? It’s not impossible for life to survive on Mars. Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars seems like the most

Some people think we’re living in a vast computer simulation contrived by an advanced alien intelligence. But not METI scientists. The truth, they say, is much simpler than that. Members of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), a San Francisco-based research organisation, convened in Paris last week to discuss aliens. Or, rather, the complete and utter lack

Earlier this month, the world was excited to hear that NASA had scheduled the first-ever “all-female spacewalk”. Now, an annoying equipment problem has disappointed many #WomeninSTEM enthusiasts. Expedition 59/60 flight engineers Christina Koch and Anne McClain were going to venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) on March 29 to continue upgrading batteries on one

We’ve learned a lot about Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, since it was first discovered in 1846. Some scientists believe it could be an “ocean world” with liquid water – and maybe even harbor life. And now, pending approval, we might soon get our best glimpse yet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed on Tuesday at a

Jupiter’s anomalous size and location in our Solar System has been puzzling researchers for years, since it doesn’t fit with our understanding of planetary formation. Now, astronomers think they’ve figured out how the gas giant ended up in its curious position. According to current models, giant planets form in the outer reaches of a system,

The Great Red Spot, a storm larger than the Earth and powerful enough to tear apart smaller storms that get drawn into it, is one of the most recognizable features in Jupiter’s atmosphere and the entire solar system. The counterclockwise-moving storm, an anticyclone, boasts wind speeds as high as 300 miles (500 kilometres) per hour.

A meteor that exploded above the clouds over the Bering Sea in December was caught on camera by NASA’s eyes in the sky. Just minutes after the meteor burst apart on 18 December 2018, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard the Terra satellite captured the scene in a sequence of images. Clearly visible is

After decades of research, an analysis of light has finally identified the age of an ancient star cluster in the Milky Way. It’s called HP 1, and it’s roughly 12.8 billion years old. That makes it one of the oldest ever found – not just in the galaxy, but in the entire Universe. HP 1

Spring officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere early Wednesday evening at 5:58 pm Eastern (9:58 pm UTC). Less than four hours after the onset of the new season, a stunning spring supermoon will be full in the night sky. The third and final supermoon of 2019, it reaches 100 percent fullness at 9:43 pm Eastern.

Many stars sedately tread the measure of the galaxies they inhabit, slowly orbiting the galactic core. Not a star called PSR J0002+6216, though. PSR J0002+6216, astronomers have discovered, is rocketing through the Milky Way at absolutely breakneck speeds. To be precise, it’s travelling at 1,130 kilometres per second (700 miles per second). That could take

The type of rocks you live near could greatly affect how much your area could be damaged by massive solar flares in future, a study has found. Usually all eyes are on the Sun in anticipation of a serious solar storm that threatens to incinerate delicate technology across the globe.  Some are looking the other

A shock discovery is in from Bennu. The NASA spacecraft analysing the asteroid has observed it shooting out plumes of dust that surround it in a dusty haze – a phenomenon we’ve never seen in an asteroid before. In the months that OSIRIS-REx has been studying Bennu, the spacecraft has observed this ejecta no fewer

Astronomers have just found 83 quasars, powered by supermassive black holes and dating back to the infancy of the Universe, when it was less than 10 percent of its current age. This discovery reveals that such objects were more common at the dawn of time than we thought, and challenges our entire cosmological model. Quasars

A few months ago, on 18 December 2018, a massive airburst in the skies above Earth exploded with the equivalent of 173 kilotons of TNT. That’s over 10 times the amount released by the Hiroshima bombing (15 kilotons), and the third largest meteor explosion in over 100 years, coming in behind the 2013 Chelyabinsk explosion

We often think of Venus as our closest Solar System sibling. It’s the most similar to Earth in size, mass and composition. And we thought it was the closest in terms of physical distance – but it looks like that honour could belong to Mercury. No, the order of the planetary orbits is still the

Tests show that dormant herpes viruses reactivate in more than half the astronauts who travel on the Space Shuttle and International Space station, according to new NASA research – a phenomenon the space agency says could pose problems for deep space missions. “During spaceflight there is a rise in secretion of stress hormones like cortisol

Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic area at the center of the Galaxy, where our Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) lives. But at least one of them was ejected from the comparatively calm galactic disk, a discovery that has astronomers rethinking this whole star ejection

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which launched in 2016, just sent back some spectacular images of the Martian surface. The orbiter is equipped to take images of the Martian surface in glorious 3D. The picture above might look like some kind of hairy structure, but it’s actually a false-colour image of

Returning to Earth from the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield remarked how making the right decision is vital in high pressure environments, saying: Most of the time, you only really get one try to do most of the critical stuff and the consequences are life or death. Mankind is preparing for a new

After more than a decade of patiently waiting and watching, astronomers have seen signs that one of the rarest stars known to science is waking up from its slumber.  It’s called XTE J1810–197, and it’s part of an exclusive club of weird stars – it’s one of just four highly magnetic magnetars that have been found to

Before its circuits ran cold in the shadow of a Martian dust storm, Opportunity took one long look at its surroundings and saved it for posterity.  The image represents a poignant conclusion to the rover’s mission; a detailed panorama combining the most recent tracks of its marathon journey with a glimpse of the sands it

Half a century ago, NASA’s Apollo program sent a handful of people to walk around on the Moon, take a few pics, say something witty, play golf, and bring back some souvenirs. Not all of those souvenirs got handed out for analysis, but NASA had good reasons to keep a few on ice. Now nine

The idea of one day travelling to another star system and seeing what is there has been the fervent dream of people long before the first rockets and astronauts were sent to space. But despite all the progress we have made since the beginning of the Space Age, interstellar travel remains just that – a

Our Solar System is filled with dust from crumbling asteroids and comets, but only some planets are honoured with a grainy ring to call their own. Both Venus and Earth have this pleasure, escorted around the Sun by a band of cosmic matter. The little planet of Mercury, on the other hand, was once thought

Jupiter: a massive, lifeless gas giant out there on the other side of the asteroid belt. It’s a behemoth, containing 2.5 times as much mass as all the other planets combined. To top it off, it’s named after the Roman king of gods. Earth: a tiny rocky world, almost too close to the Sun, where

Scientists just discovered evidence of a massive solar storm that happened some 2,679 years ago. Such blasts of plasma and electromagnetic radiation from the Sun have the potential to seriously impact life on Earth, so it’s important for us to understand them as much as we can. The evidence they dug up is in the

Within the constellation of Hercules, 230 million light years away, a fierce and drawn-out battle is finally coming to an end. A pair of colliding galaxies, pulled together by gravity, are at last laying down their arms and joining forces. A newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope depicts the two star systems on

When it comes to understanding the history of the Solar System, a whole lot of clues to its past lie in the geological records right here on Earth. New research stretches that link back some 200 million years using what scientists are calling a Geological Orrery. You’ve probably seen an orrery before – it’s one

SpaceX has a new all-star crew member, though it’s anything but human: It’s a $US20 plush-toy planet that astronauts call “Little Earth” or “Earthy”. Last Saturday, SpaceX launched its new Crew Dragon spaceship designed for NASA astronauts toward the International Space Station (ISS), where the vehicle docked on March 3. No humans flew on the historic commercial mission, called Demo-1 – only a crash-test

A few hours ago, the SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. The splashdown is the last act in what has been a successful first flight for the Crew Dragon. The flight, called Demo-1, was launched on March 2nd and spent five days at the

In the course of looking for possible signs of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI), scientists have had to do some really outside-of-the-box thinking. Since it is a foregone conclusion that many ETIs would be older and more technologically advanced than humanity, those engaged in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have to consider what a more advanced

What’s in a galaxy? A lot, apparently. We now have the most accurate measurements of the size and mass of the Milky Way ever calculated, and it’s turned out to be more massive than we thought. How massive? Well, about 1.5 trillion Suns’ worth of mass (solar masses), within a radius of around 129,000 light-years.

It is a big step for women. If all goes according to plan, on March 29, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to conduct the first all-female spacewalk. Anne McClain and Christina Koch will venture out together about 240 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth and make history. Adding to the significance of their

If all goes to plan, a fiery Dragon will light up the sky over the Atlantic before hopefully cooling off with a watery splashdown on March 8. The SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule is of enormous significance for spaceflight as it has just become the first commercial vehicle to automatically dock with the International Space Station

We’ve been looking for decades for dark matter, yet the mysterious stuff remains undetectable to our instruments. Now, astrophysicists have explored an intriguing possibility: what if it’s not dark matter that’s affecting galactic rotation after all. What if it’s the mass of light instead? In a 1980 paper, the American astronomer Vera Rubin pretty conclusively

The Universe is a wondrous place, full of vast numbers of planets to explore, unsolved mysteries, and even ‘superbubbles‘ blown by black holes. But there’s one thing that space really isn’t: loud. Without Earth’s air molecules to help you hear, out there in space you’d be listening to a whole lot of silence. Luckily, that

During a recent talk, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, expanded on his grand vision of settling space. But in doing so, he pooh-poohed the goal of perhaps his biggest rival, the SpaceX founder Elon Musk, of settling people on Mars. “We have sent robotic probes now to every planet in this solar system,

Black holes might easily be the most compelling mysteries in the Universe. Thought to be the collapsed cores of dead stars, these strange objects are well known for one particular property – matter goes in; nothing comes out. As far as we know, black holes are so dense that nothing can escape their event horizon. But

We have another juicy cosmic mystery on our hands. Another star has been caught in the act of dimming, and doing so in a really peculiar way. The light of EPIC 204376071, a star just 440 light-years from Earth, dimmed by up to 80 percent for an entire day. That’s a huge amount of blocked

If you spend any time around the internet traps, you may have noticed that there’s a bit of an asteroid frenzy going on. One has already gone past us – on Monday, a space rock ‘the size of a jumbo jet’ flew quite close to our planet. On Friday, astronomers are expecting a larger one;

Two weeks after SpaceX launched the first private lunar lander toward the Moon, the Israeli spacecraft sent back a stunning selfie of itself with Earth in the background. The dishwasher-sized robot is a four-legged lander called Beresheet, which is Hebrew for “in the beginning” – the first words of the Bible. The US$100 million mission

We tend to think of planets neatly ordered in systems, like our own Solar System. But every now and then, astronomers get hints of something else – rogue planets, not attached to any star or system, drifting lonely through the galaxy. Now it turns out there could be many more of them than anyone ever

Since its arrival at Jupiter in 2016, NASA’s little space explorer Juno has been steadfastly circling the enigmatic gas giant, over and over again. Each close flyby (or perijove) from its highly elliptical orbit brings us new views of Jupiter’s swirly cloud cover, and we just can’t get enough. If you can believe it, Juno

Sixty-seven million light-years away, a galaxy is blowing enormous bubbles. We know what they are. Known as nuclear superbubbles, the structures are likely created by the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s centre. Now, thanks to new data, we know something incredible is occurring inside them. Observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of spiral galaxy

SpaceX has become the first company to design, build, launch, and now dock a commercial spaceship made for flying people to the International Space Station. Elon Musk’s rocket company launched the seven-seat vehicle, called Crew Dragon, on Saturday at 2:49 am ET (7:49 am UTC). By early morning on Sunday, the 14,000-lb (6,350 kilogram) space

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted a picture early this morning of “Ripley,” a dummy the spacetech company plans to send to the International Space Station on board the Crew Dragon space capsule this weekend. Ripley will be an integral part of Demo-1, the first uncrewed test flight of SpaceX’s futuristic passenger craft that could one