When the JWST was being built, some labelled it as the Hubble's successor. In some ways it is, even though the Hubble is still performing important science observations. When the two telescopes team up, we get the best of both.

An international team of scientists led by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) proposed a new method for living beyond Earth. Their experiment demonstrated how bioplastic structures can be grown using algae, which would be rugged enough to survive the hostile Martian environment.

Although dark matter doesn't seem to interact with regular matter or itself, if it has particle-like properties, it could self-annihilate if packed into a tight space. In a new paper, researchers have proposed that dark matter could make its way into brown dwarfs near the Galactic Center, where everything is packed more closely together. The dark matter could annihilate inside the brown dwarfs, creating Dark Dwarfs that could be detected.

Gravitational waves come in all shapes and sizes - and frequencies. But, so far, we haven’t been able to capture any of the higher frequency ones. That’s unfortunate, as they might hold the key to unlocking our understanding of some really interesting physical phenomena, such as Boson clouds and tiny block hole mergers. A new paper from researchers at Notre Dame and Caltech, led by PhD student Christopher Jungkind, explores how we might use one of the world’s most prolific gravitational wave observatories, GEO600, to capture signals from those phenomena for the first time.

We all know what it's like when Earth is on the receiving end of a solar flare. Things get spicy in the upper atmosphere, and the outbursts have the potential to disrupt technology here at home. Catastrophic flares of radiation devastate planets around other stars, too. Now it looks like scientists have found that planets orbiting close to their stars can trigger the flares that threaten to harm them.

NASA's Curiosity Rover has been exploring Gale Crater and found that carbonate materials make up to 11% of rocks in the region. These are important because carbonates formed by pulling CO2 out of Mars's atmosphere. A new paper suggests that Mars once had a self-regulating climate system that created oases of liquid water on its surface over billions of years, keeping the planet barely habitable with alternating wet and dry periods. The atmosphere is thin because its CO2 was locked away in rocks.

Here's a thought experiment. What would happen if you were on the International Space Station, folded up a paper airplane, and threw it from the station? According to a new paper, it would fall from orbit in just 3.5 days, but still keep aerodynamic stability until about 120 km. Then it would heat up and combust at about 90-110 km altitude. It's a fun idea, but there are actual practical uses to probe the density of the atmosphere or test thin-film space technologies.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can tell us a lot about the subjects of its observations if it spends enough time with them. That includes lonely rocks on the edges of our solar system, such as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) Quaoar. Recent observations using the NIRCam on JWST and pre-published on arXiv by researchers at the University of Central Florida, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and Kyoto University add a plethora of new data to our understanding of this enigmatic object, including insights into what might be causing its ring system and its hydrocarbon atmosphere.

The long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory has delivered some preliminary observations of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae field. 47 Tuc is the Milky Way's second-brightest globular cluster, second to Omega Centauri. The Rubin Observatory's data demonstrates the telescope's promising scientific potential.

The Milky Way and other similar galaxies have two distinct disk sections. One is the thin disk section, and it contains mostly younger stars with higher metallicity. The second is the thick disk, and it contains older stars with lower metallicity. The effort to study these disks in more galaxies and in greater detail has been stymied. But now we have the JWST, and researchers used it to examine more than 100 distant, edge-on galaxies.

Earth life is carbon-based, and without carbon, there would be no life. New research shows how Earth got its carbon from impactors, including a boost from Theia, the impactor that created the Moon. Jupiter also pitched in to help.

The search for dark matter requires all of the best models, theories, and ideas we can throw at it. A new paper from Julia Monika Koulen, Stefano Profumo, and Nolan Smyth from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) tackles the implications of the sizes and abundance of one of the more interesting dark matter candidates - primordial black holes (PBHs).

Proxima Centauri b is the closest known exoplanet that could be in the habitable zone of its star. Therefore, it has garnered a lot of attention, including several missions designed to visit it and send back information. Unfortunately, due to technological constraints and the gigantic distances involved, most of those missions only weigh a few grams and require massive solar scales or pushing lasers to get anywhere near their target. But why let modern technological levels limit your imagination when there are so many other options, if still theoretical, options to send a larger mission to our nearest potentially habitable neighbor? That was the thought behind the Master’s Thesis of Amelie Lutz at Virginia Tech - she looked at the possibility of using fusion propulsion systems to send a few hundred kilogram probe to the system, and potentially even orbit it.

What new methods can be developed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)? This is what a recent white paper submitted to the 2025 NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (DARES) Request for Information (RFI) hopes to address as a pair of researchers from the Breakthrough Listen project and Michigan State University discussed how high-energy astronomy could be used for identifying radio signals from an extraterrestrial technological civilization, also called technosignatures. This study has the potential to help SETI and other organizations develop novel techniques for finding intelligent life beyond Earth.

One of the most iconic cosmic scenes in the Universe lies nearly 3.8 billion light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Carina. This is where two massive clusters of galaxies have collided. The resulting combined galaxies and other material is now called the Bullet Cluster, after one of the two members that interacted over several billion years. It's one of the hottest-known galaxy clusters, thanks to clouds of gas that were heated by shockwaves during the event. Astronomers have observed this scene with several different telescopes in multiple wavelengths of light, including X-ray and infrared. Those observations and others show that the dark matter makes up the majority of the cluster's mass. Its gravitational effect distorts light from more distant objects and makes it an ideal gravitational lens.

Earlier this year, asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered and found to have a trajectory through the Earth/Moon system in 2032. The world's telescopes focused on the potential threat and downgraded the chance to negligible for the Earth...but it still has a non-zero chance of hitting the Moon. As the asteroid became too dim to continue observing, its Moon impact chance stood at 4%. When will we update this number? Not until it does another close flyby in 2028.

Astronomers have made a breakthrough by using 25 year old Hubble images to investigate a potential "rogue planet" drifting through space without a host star. When a brief gravitational microlensing event occurred in 2023, researchers discovered Hubble had photographed the same location in 1997, creating an unprecedented quarter century baseline. Finding no stellar companion in the archival data strengthened evidence for a rogue planet with mass between Earth and Saturn, demonstrating the scientific value of space telescope archives for studying these elusive worlds wandering the Galaxy alone.

Some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are designed to simulate complex astrophysical processes, like what's happening inside a giant star as it's going supernova. But researchers have developed a new machine learning algorithm that was able to accurately simulate galaxy evolution with fewer computer resources and dramatically more quickly than a supercomputer, which could take years to fully process.

Astronomers once wondered if the Universe might one day collapse in on itself in a Big Crunch, but the discovery of dark energy suggested that the expansion of the Universe would accelerate, removing that possibility. New data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggests that dark energy might be changing in strength over time, maybe even going negative. If that result holds, are we due for a Big Crunch? And how long would it take?

How do galaxies like ours continue producing stars long after they should have used up their star-forming gas. Somehow, an external gas source must find its way into the galaxy. New research has found evidence of gas clouds that found their way into a spiral galaxy, likely fueling continued star formation.

The beautiful supernova remnant looks a little different from other examples of stars that detonated in the past. And it should, because according to astronomers, the star that met its end exploded twice. It was a white dwarf in its former life, pulling material from a binary companion, creating the perfect conditions for a Type 1a supernova. It accumulated a blanket of helium, which exploded first, triggering a second detonation at the core of the star.

Astronomers used the JWST to examine M82, a nearby starburst galaxy. M82 is forming stars at a prodigious rate due to its interactions with its neighbour, M81. It produces thousands of solar masses of stars per year, much more than the Milky Way.

China's asteroid probe turned its cameras back towards the Earth and Moon, capturing an image of our home planet on May 30, 2025. The image was taken when the spacecraft was about 590,000 km away, speeding towards asteroid 2016HO3, where it will retrieve a sample and bring it back to Earth before carrying on to main-belt comet 311P. The spacecraft has been in flight for 33 days and is now over 12 million kilometers from Earth.

According to the latest studies led by Heidelberg University astronomers, low-mass stars quite often host Earth-like planets. Data collected as part of the CARMENES project were the basis of this finding. By analyzing the data, an international research team succeeded in identifying four new exoplanets and determining their properties.

A newly discovered object may give astronomers an opportunity to study an interstellar visitor like never before. The object (A11pl3Z) is currently at +18th magnitude, moving slowly along the border of the constellations Serpens Cauda and Sagittarius, right near the galactic plane. The object was captured on July 2nd by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Rio Hurtado made the discovery on July 1st. Sam Deen soon backed this up with pre-discovery images from worldwide ATLAS sites in Chile, Hawaii and South Africa from June 25-29.

A pair of Japanese weather satellites took a break from monitoring Earth weather to sneak a peek at Planet Venus. Despite the fact that it's relatively tiny, and millions of kilometers away, they were able to detect changes in Venus' cloud-top temperatures and see patterns and structure in its upper atmosphere. There are long-term trends on Venus that these long-lasting satellites will be able to study, beyond the timeframe of a shorter mission.

For folks in the United States, July evenings mean 4th of July fireworks. While you’re waiting for the show, be sure to watch for the most elusive of the planets as twilight falls, as Mercury shines at its very best for 2025. If you’ve never seen the innermost world before, now is a good time to try. This is because Mercury reaches greatest elongation, or its greatest point from the Sun as seen from our Earthly vantage point later this week.

While we know of thousands of exoplanets, the science of studying their atmospheres is still in its early days. When astronomers analyze atmospheres, they have to decide which molecules to include in their models, which can bias the results. A new paper proposes that Cassini data on Titan could provide the perfect benchmark, helping to distinguish between different hydrocarbons detected in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Failed Orbital Mission Loses Human Remains, Space Pot

For long-duration missions, female astronauts generally use hormonal contraception to suppress their periods. But this method has potential health risks and requires special storage. Pads and tampons create waste in space. Now researchers have tested menstrual cups on a sub-orbital rocket flight, where they experienced the force of launch, and found they performed identically to ground control cups. This could provide a new option to female astronauts on future missions.

Rivers are one of the main ways that plastics get into the world's oceans, and now we can identify where plastic waste accumulates from space. Researchers used data from the Worldview-3 satellite to identify and map plastic material and polymer-coated surfaces in a watershed on the US-Mexico border. They collected different waste from stream channels and then identified their specific infrared absorption features, matching them to satellite imagery.

If you could see the Universe through a radio-wave "eye", you'd detect mini-halos of relativistic particles creating radio emissions around some galaxy clusters. Astronomers long figured those halos are relative "recent" happenings in the nearby Universe and didn't occur in the early epochs of cosmic history. That's all changed now that the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio observatory in Europe has revealed newborn galaxies in the early Universe already surrounded by a halo of particles. It's a rare look at what such clusters were like soon after they formed.

How accurate are the exoplanet radius measurements obtained by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how hundreds of exoplanetary radii measured by TESS during its mission might be incorrect and the data could be underestimating the radii measurements. This study has the potential to help astronomers develop more efficient methods more estimating exoplanetary characteristics, which could influence whether or not they are Earth-sized.

What can Earth-sized exoplanets teach scientists about the formation and evolution of exoplanets throughout the cosmos? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as an international team of researchers announced the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet that exhibits temperatures and a density comparable to Earth. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of Earth-sized exoplanets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.

What can the pH level of the subsurface ocean on Enceladus tell us about finding life there? This is what a recent study accepted to Icarus hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the potential pH level of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean based on current estimates. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the composition of Enceladus’ subsurface ocean and what this can mean for finding life as we know it.

Distant exoplanets can be dodgy to spot even in the best of observations. Despite the challenges, a team of astronomers just reported the discovery of a gas giant exoplanet that lies about 400 light-years from Earth. It's called TOI-4465 b and it takes 12 hours to transit across the face of its star during its 102-day orbit.

What is the importance of studying and utilizing lunar polar volatiles during the Artemis program, and specifically for first crewed mission, Artemis III? This is what a recent study presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated using lunar polar volatiles for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) purposes. In geology, volatiles are substances that vaporize at low temperatures, and examples include water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. In the case of the Moon, key volatiles are water located in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar south polar region.

Quasars provide some of the most spectacular light shows in the universe. However, they are typically exceedingly rare since they are caused by massive astrophysical forces that don’t happen very often. So it came as quite a surprise when scientists found a group of 11 of them hanging on in the same general area, in what appeared to be equivalent to the galactic countryside. A new paper from Yongming Liang and their co-authors at the University of Tokyo describes this finding, which they dubbed the Cosmic Himalayas, and some of the weird astronomical circumstances that place the discovery in context.

Spacecraft violently shake, rattle, and roll on their way into space aboard a giant explosion. Therefore, they must also be tested to make sure they can withstand those forces before getting to their orbit for deployment. One of NASA’s major observatories recently completed part of its trials, with the core portion of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully completing its shock and vibration testing a few weeks ago.

Scientists are constantly finding new ways to look at things, and that’s especially true for objects that represent an outlier of their specific type. Adjectives like “biggest”, “brightest”, or “fastest spinning” all seem to attract scientific studies - perhaps because they’re an easier sell to funding agencies. No matter the reason, that means we typically get a lot of good science on specific objects that represent their particular class of objects well, and a new paper from Ozcan Caliskan from Istanbul University in Turkey hits that nail on the head when it comes to the most massive known white dwarf star.

How do you search for a substance that doesn't give off any kind of light, but its gravitational influence shapes galaxies? That's the challenge researchers face as they try to find and explain the mysterious substance called dark matter. They're wrestling with an invisible "something" that appears to make up much of all matter in the Universe.

The challenge of building habitats on the Moon is considerable, mainly because most additive manufacturing (aka. 3-D printing) techniques are not feasible. By utilizing a 3-D printing method known as light-based sintering, future missions to the Moon could manufacture bricks out of lunar regolith, rather than trying to build whole structures. This would facilitate a long-term human presence on the lunar surface, consistent with the Artemis Program and other plans for lunar exploration and development.

Why does the Moon have two different faces?. That question frames the lunar dichotomy: The nearside that faces us is different than the lunar farside. Scientists have worked hard to understand why that is, and new research says that the presence of certain minerals could explain why.

One of Webb’s strong points is its ability to directly image planets around another solar system. The telescope has been in operation for long enough now that a flood of those images are starting, as more and more systems come under the telescope’s gaze. One of those is described in a recent paper and press release from NASA. According to the paper, the planet in a nearby system is about the size of Saturn, which would make it the smallest planet ever found by direct observation.

The Japanese company ispace released the technical details that likely doomed the landing of their Hakuto-R Mission 2 lunar lander earlier this month. According to a press release, their engineers narrowed down the issue to a failure of the spacecraft's Laser Range Finder (LRF). Engineers suspect that the LRF's performance deteriorated during flight, causing it to be slow to make its measurements and update its descent speed correctly. It hit the Moon at 42 meters a second, crashing hard.

There’s nothing to get a scientist’s heart pumping like a good, old-fashioned statistical debate. When it comes to topics like finding Earth analogues or hints of a biosignature in an atmosphere, those statistical debates could have real world consequences, both for the assignment of additional observational resources, but also for humanity’s general understanding of itself in the Universe. A new paper from two prominent exoplanet hunters, David Kipping from Columbia and Björn Benneke from UCLA, argues that their colleagues in the field of exoplanet detection have been doing statistics all wrong for decades, and make a argument for how better to present their results to the public.

Orientation is more important than most people thing when it comes to sensing. A common example would be when the lasers of a garage door are mis-aligned, forcing the door to remain open until they are brought back in line. But when it comes to scientific sensors, orientation is even more important. So it was with great fanfare that NASA announced a new way to orient sensors on one of the most venerable of its spacecraft - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) - and the resultant scientific discoveries it enabled.

Despite the proliferation of AI based research lately, sometimes researchers need a human eye to make true discoveries. That collaboration was in evidence in a recent paper by Dr. Veselin Kostov, a research scientist at the SETI Institute and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who led a team of almost 1,800 to review a dataset from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) that led to the discovery of almost 8,000 new eclipsing binary systems.

As Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos Islands, he discovered how the different islands allowed for different species to thrive. This is very similar to our current exploration of the Solar System; individual worlds, separated by the vacuum of space. The similarities provide a new insight into predictin planetary contamination risks and improve protection methods. A new paper by Daniel J. Brener and Charlesg S. Cockell uses the spread of life to new islands as a powerful model for rethinking how we prevent Earth's microbes from contaminating other worlds, shifting focus from probability calculations to whether microbes can actually survive in alien environments.