Follow missions, planets, stars, and discoveries beyond Earth. Understand the science behind space exploration and the questions researchers are trying to answer.
31 stories & explainers · Newest first
A spacecraft the size of a small bus is about to borrow Earth's own gravity for a shove toward Jupiter, skipping the fuel tank entirely. On 28 September, ESA's Juice probe makes its third such flyby on the way to the icy moons.
2 min read
Picture a cavity in space wide enough to swallow hundreds of star systems, blasted open by the winds of dying stars. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope just photographed exactly that inside the nebula N44.
2 min read
Satellites orbiting Earth continuously measure things like sea levels, clouds, and land cover, building long-term records that reveal how the planet is actually changing over decades.
4 min read
Imagine tracking the planet's pulse for 40 years and then losing the signal for even a few months. NASA calls the fix 'foresight' — planning future satellites years before current ones fail.
2 min read
Twenty years ago, astronomers voted Pluto out of the planet club, yet the icy world at the solar system's edge remains one of the most studied bodies beyond Neptune.
2 min read
A stellar nursery shaped like a spider's web sits 161,000 light-years away, and NASA just merged X-ray, infrared, and visible light data to see it like never before.
2 min read
Imagine watching the sun vanish not behind clouds, but behind the entire Moon. Artemis 2 astronaut Victor Glover described exactly that sight during his crew's lunar flyby in April.
2 min read
A solar eclipse happens when the Moon blocks the Sun, but the view changes completely depending on where you stand, even in orbit around the Moon itself.
5 min read
A giant dish that once tracked Sputnik across the sky could soon go dark. Jodrell Bank Observatory in England is facing closure after a major funder withdrew its financial support, astronomers say.
2 min read
After 241 days circling Earth at roughly 28,000 kilometers an hour, astronaut Chris Williams and two Roscosmos cosmonauts are finally headed home from the International Space Station.
2 min read
Ever wondered how the International Space Station stays up without falling, or why astronauts float inside it? Here's how orbit actually works.
5 min read
A spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Anil Menon and two Russian cosmonauts just clicked into place 400 kilometers above Earth, kicking off an eight-month science mission aboard the International Space Station.
2 min read
A comet called 3I/ATLAS is speeding through our Solar System right now — and it didn't form here. Telescope studies show it came from a calm, distant star system, making it only the third known interstellar object ever detected passing through our cosmic neighbourhood.
3 min read
An interstellar object is a chunk of rock or ice that formed around a distant star and then travelled all the way into our Solar System. This explainer helps you understand what these rare visitors are, how scientists spot them, and why they matter.
6 min read
About 95% of the universe is invisible — and a bold new idea suggests that dark matter and dark energy, two of physics' biggest mysteries, might be two sides of the same hidden coin.
2 min read
About 95% of the universe is made of things scientists cannot see or touch directly — dark matter and dark energy. This explainer helps you understand what they are, how scientists know they exist, and why physicists are racing to unlock their secrets.
6 min read
The sun constantly fires invisible storms of charged particles toward Earth, and a newly selected NASA mission will study how these space weather events interact with our atmosphere to improve forecasts that protect satellites, power grids, and astronauts.
3 min read
Every drop of water in Earth's oceans has an origin story — and for decades, scientists blamed comets and asteroids for delivering it. Now, a fresh hypothesis suggests Earth may have quietly made its own water from the inside out.
3 min read
Four astronauts now have their names on one of the most ambitious space missions since the Apollo era — NASA's Artemis III will take them closer to the Moon than any humans have been in over 50 years.
3 min read
Rockets use powerful engines and burning fuel to push through Earth's atmosphere and reach space. This explainer breaks down exactly how a rocket lifts off, climbs into orbit, and why it takes so much force to get there.
6 min read
A tiny flicker of starlight, spotted by a telescope in a Colorado parking lot, helped save a space mission that would go on to discover over 2,700 confirmed planets beyond our solar system. NASA's Kepler telescope proved we live in a galaxy crowded with worlds.
3 min read
A single image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows glowing clusters of newborn stars inside the spiral arms of Messier 51 — a galaxy so far away that its light left before humans existed on Earth.
2 min read
Before any astronaut steps on the Moon, NASA needs to solve a critical puzzle: how to move crew safely between two very different spacecraft in deep space. A new Earth-orbit rehearsal mission for Artemis III aims to test exactly that, with no margin for error.
3 min read
What if the servers storing your photos and videos floated 500 km above Earth? India is preparing to launch its first orbital data centre satellite, a move that could change how countries store and protect digital information.
2 min read
Two private rocket companies are racing to build spacecraft that must land astronauts on the Moon by 2028 — a deadline that space engineers say is extremely tight but not impossible.
3 min read
A city of 22 million people is slowly sinking — and a joint Indian-American space mission just captured the clearest map yet of how fast it's happening. The NISAR satellite, built by ISRO and NASA together, revealed some neighborhoods are dropping by more than 40 centimetres a year.
2 min read
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found that young stars fade in X-ray energy far more quickly than models predicted, changing what scientists know about early star behaviour.
2 min read
Four NASA astronauts returned to Earth on 11 April 2026 after completing the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight to travel around the Moon since 1972.
2 min read
ISRO has successfully completed its second Integrated Air Drop Test for the Gaganyaan mission, bringing India closer to sending astronauts to space.
2 min read
NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted minerals on Mars that only form when water is around. Scientists say this is a big step in the search for signs of ancient life.
2 min read
ISRO has confirmed Chandrayaan-4, a mission that aims to bring a small sample of Moon rock back to Earth for the first time in India's space history.
2 min read