Space telescopes use traditional polished mirrors like ground telescopes, which are heavy, unwieldy, and expensive to build. A new type of flexible telescope lens could be lighter and larger, creating space telescopes that could collect 100 times more light than JWST. Instead of a single large, delicate telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory would consist of a fleet of lighter, cheaper, identical spacecraft working together to produce images. They'd use thin diffractive lenses, which have been improved to the point that they can produce near-perfect image quality.

The ESA is conducting a study to assess the potential for building space based solar power satellites... on the Moon!

When SETI researchers discover an intriguing radio signal, their first instinct is to ask, "Is the signal coming from Earth?" So many alien messages turned out to be Earth signals reflecting off objects in space, like satellites. Scientists have developed a new technique to vet these signals and confirm whether they came from outer space, even with a single message. When a signal passes through the interstellar medium, it should be affected by free electrons from cold plasma, and it's possible to separate the genuine interstellar message from one that emanated close to Earth.

At a recent summit, China revealed new details about its first crewed lunar mission scheduled for 2030, including schematics, graphics, and designs for the rockets, lander, and surface elements.

Astronomers have an ultracool star that only has a surface temperature of 425 degrees centigrade, cooler than the cleaning cycle of a typical oven. For comparison, the Sun has a surface temperature of about 5600 C. This isn't the coldest star ever seen, but it's the coldest that was discovered using radio astronomy. This class of ultracool brown dwarfs is challenging to find because they don't have the kind of dynamics that produce magnetic fields and generate radio waves. Stars are active in the radio spectrum because of their magnetic fields, so it's puzzling to find these brown dwarves so inactive.

Astronomers previously believed that you needed a special environment for a rocky planet to have liquid oceans on its surface, with just the right temperature and surface pressure. But a new study suggests that the radioactivity from rocks could melt water. Even if the surface is frozen, there could be oceans of water beneath the surface. Researchers suggest that there could be an average of one planet per star with these conditions in the Milky Way - 100 times more likely than previous estimates.

A new paper argues that the universe is 26.7 billion years old. But the model only works by assuming tired light and changing physical constants.

China just launched the first in a series of broadband internet satellites, which could lead to another mega-constellation.