Space news stories

Celestial spectacle will be at its most impressive on 28 February, when Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will align across the sky.

It’s a piece of Mars that fell to Earth, most likely after a huge impact on the Red Planet. It’s made up of material from around 4.48 billion years ago, making it some of the oldest known Martian material in the solar system. The new paper is available in pre-print on arXiv.

Recreating cosmic dust may help answer questions about how meteorites hitting Earth came to contain organic matter

There’s a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4 per cent), but non-negligible… A new paper from Yifan He of Tsinghua University and co-authors, released as a preprint on arXiv, looks at the bright side of the potential science we could do if a collision does indeed happen.

Astronomers have gotten a rare glimpse at four baby planets as they’re growing up, and it reveals something surprising: These toddler worlds are getting lighter as they age…The study, published Jan. 7 in the journal Nature, enables astronomers to trace the chaotic processes that sculpt planetary systems over billions of years.

Mars is absolutely dripping with evidence that the red planet was once a striking blue, complete with glistening lakes, snaking rivers, and vast oceans. Now, scientists have calculated the ‘sea level’ during the wettest time known in Martian history. The research was published in the journal npj Space Exploration.

The gaseous cocoons surrounding “little red dots” hint at their true nature, a new James Webb telescope study hints. The researchers published their findings Wednesday (Jan. 14) in the journal Nature.

Betelgeuse is one of the weirdest stars in the sky, but astronomers can now explain one of its most enduring mysteries. A small companion star has been confirmed, revealed by the wake it leaves as it plows through the red giant’s atmosphere. The study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, and is currently available on the preprint server arXiv.

According to the research team’s findings, which appeared this month in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Uranus and Neptune may be more rocky in their cores and less ‘icy’ than previously thought.

Bleached clay rocks found on the Martian surface suggest that the Red Planet was once home to heavy rainfall and tropical conditions, new Perseverance observations hint. The study was published Dec. 1 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

A rock on Mars spilled a surprising yellow treasure after Curiosity accidentally cracked through its unremarkable exterior.

Nearly a century ago, scientists proposed that a mysterious invisible substance they named dark matter clumped around galaxies and formed a cosmic web across the universe. Details are published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

The crater formed during the Holocene epoch when the last ice age ended roughly 11,700 years ago…The evidence confirming its extraterrestrial origin lies in the details. Within the granite, researchers found numerous quartz fragments exhibiting planar deformation features and microscopic characteristics that serve as geological fingerprints of impact events.

These newly named ananguites, the researchers say, formed in a giant impact that took place some 11 million years ago. The findings have been published in Earth & Planetary Science Letters.

The Southern Taurid meteor shower peak on Nov. 4-5 brings the potential for bright meteors and dramatic fireballs.

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered five complex organic molecules trapped in the ice around a star outside our galaxy. This cosmic first hints that the stuff of life may be widespread throughout space. See the study published Oct. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.