Space news stories

Using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) telescope to survey large expanses of sky, a team of researchers led by the University of Maryland investigated a stream of space debris known to drift near Earth called the Taurid swarm.

If you want to pinpoint your place in the Universe, start with your cosmic address. You live on Earth->Solar System->Milky Way Galaxy->Local Cluster->Virgo Cluster->Virgo Supercluster->Laniakea.

The huge asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone, scientists have confirmed. A second, smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater during the same era.

A comet that has not been seen from Earth since Neanderthals were alive and kicking has reappeared in the sky, with astronomers saying it might be visible to the naked eye.

The existential threat from a large meteor is real, but two next-generation telescopes are about to make us safer.

New research published in The Planetary Science Journal suggests that the moon was captured during a close encounter between a young Earth and a terrestrial binary—the moon and another rocky object.

Computers truly are wonderful things and powerful but only if they are programmed by a skillful mind. Check this out… there is an algorithm that mimics the growth of slime mold, but a team of researchers has adapted it to model the large-scale structure of the Universe.

According to a study published this week, an asteroid roughly the length of a city bus will be captured by Earth’s gravitational pull and orbit our planet for about two months, becoming a “mini moon”.

New research suggests that black holes may actually be “frozen stars,” bizarre quantum objects that lack a singularity and an event horizon, potentially solving some of the biggest paradoxes in black hole physics.

Remember to look skyward to see the moon when it will be about 27000km closer to Earth than usual

The largest moon in the solar system was struck by an ancient asteroid 20 times bigger than the rock that clattered into Earth and ended the reign of the dinosaurs 66m years ago, research suggests. See the study here.

Yet the scars of our past aren’t always easy to distinguish from more mundane tides that advance cosmic evolution, leaving researchers to speculate which patterns are evidence of cataclysmic events and which are typical signs of ageing. This research was submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics and is available on the preprint server arXiv.

Astronomers have traced the origins of 200 meteorites to five impact craters in two volcanic regions on Mars, known as Tharsis and Elysium.

The Moon’s south pole was once covered in an ocean of liquid molten rock, according to scientists. The findings back up a theory that magma formed the Moon’s surface around 4.5 billion years ago.

Scientists have discovered a reservoir of liquid water on Mars – deep in the rocky outer crust of the planet. The findings come from a new analysis of data from NASA’s Mars Insight Lander, which touched down on the planet back in 2018.

Venus and Earth seem like twins who, through dramatically different circumstances and choices, ended up leading dramatically different lives. The research has been published in Nature Geoscience.