Space
Two privately-owned spacecraft make contact from the moon
Firefly Aerospace landed a craft safely last week, a first for a private company. The status of Intuitive Machines’ lander is unknown.
Space
More Stories in Space
- Astronomy
Citizen scientists make cosmic discoveries with a global telescope network
On balconies and in backyards, Wi-Fi–enabled telescopes are connecting astronomy enthusiasts across six continents.
- Astronomy
The universe’s first supernovas probably produced water
Water may have formed less than 200 million years after the Big Bang, suggesting some conditions for life existed far earlier than previously thought.
- Planetary Science
A private mission to Venus aims to look for signs of life
If successful, Morning Star would be the first private mission to another planet and the first in over 30 years to directly measure Venus’s clouds.
- Astronomy
Some of Earth’s meteors are probably coming all the way from a neighboring star system
The triple star system is sending comets, asteroids and meteors our way, and the number of interstellar objects entering the solar system will rise.
- Space
The International Space Station lacks microbial diversity. Is it too clean?
Hundreds of surface swabs reveal the station lacks microbial diversity, an imbalance that has been linked to health issues in other settings.
- Planetary Science
Ancient Mars wasn’t just wet. It was cold and wet
Mars may once have held enough water to fill oceans and form coastlines. The planet’s red dust contains water and likely formed in cold conditions.
- Space
Earth had new, temporary radiation rings last year
Two bands of radiation called the Van Allen belts encircle Earth. After a May 2024 solar superstorm, two more showed up between those belts.
- Physics
A weird ice that may form on alien planets has finally been observed
High-pressure experiments generated the first direct observation of plastic ice, which has qualities of both crystalline ice and liquid water.
- Physics
A cosmic neutrino of unknown origins smashes energy records
A deep-sea detector glimpsed a particle with 220 million billion electron volts of energy — around 20 times as energetic as any neutrino seen before.
