The astronauts set to become the first lunar visitors in more than half a century arrived at their launch site Friday, joining the towering rocket that stands poised to blast off next week and send them around the moon.
The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.
Researchers at Northumbria University have used the most powerful space telescope ever built to answer one of the longest-standing puzzles in planetary science—why does Saturn appear to spin at a different speed depending on how you measure it? The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, reveal for the first time the complex patterns of heat and electrically charged particles in Saturn’s aurora, and show that the entire system is driven by a self-sustaining feedback loop powered by the planet’s own northern lights.
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Month image. IC 486 lies right on the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), about 380 million light-years from Earth. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, it features a bright central bar-shaped structure from which its spiral arms unfurl, wrapping around the core in a smooth, almost ring-like pattern.
Dark matter, a type of matter that does not emit, reflect or absorb light, is predicted to account for most of the matter in the universe. As it eludes common experimental techniques for studying ordinary matter, understanding the nature and composition of dark matter has so far proved very challenging. One hypothesis is that it is made up of hypothetical particles known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axions. These are theoretical elementary particles that would interact very weakly with ordinary matter and are predicted to be extremely light, highly stable and electrically neutral.
NASA is once again shooting for the moon, for the first time since the 1970s. As soon as April 2026, NASA will launch its Artemis II mission, using the Space Launch System heavy lift rocket to send a crewed spacecraft, called Orion, into orbit. From there, the crew will circle around the moon over 10 days.
As the number of exoplanet detections has breached 6,000 and continues to grow, scientists are finding a wide variety of different solar system architectures. Critical to understanding how these architectures take shape is finding young planets forming around very young stars. In 2025, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a planet about five times more massive than Jupiter around a star that’s very much a younger version of our sun.
For the second consecutive year, winter sea ice in the Arctic reached a level that matches the lowest peak observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979. On March 15, Arctic sea ice extent reached 5.52 million square miles (14.29 million square kilometers), very close to the 2025 peak of 5.53 million square miles (14.31 million square kilometers). Scientists with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, note that the two years are statistically tied.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence of a comet reversing its spin.
High-energy particles called galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) bombard unprotected objects in space, often causing damage. Earth, however, is protected by its magnetic field, which creates a protective shell around the planet that can deflect dangerous charged particles, like GCRs.
Having a baby in space may require a bit more direction, with new Adelaide University research revealing the navigational abilities of sperm are negatively impacted by a lack of gravity. Researchers at the University’s Robinson Research Institute, School of Biomedicine and Freemasons Center for Male Health and Wellbeing investigated how extraterrestrial conditions might influence sperm navigation, fertilization and early embryo development.
Debris from moonbound spacecraft has left craters on the lunar surface since the U.S. Apollo missions. But the moon is not used to being surrounded by debris. With an expected resurgence in lunar missions in the coming years, such as the U.S. Artemis II test flight, Purdue University engineer Carolin Frueh is researching how to track the likely increase in spacecraft debris and minimize its impact in the area between the moon and Earth, called the cislunar region. In the next decade, at least 30 missions could be launching to the cislunar region.
A team of cosmologists in China has introduced a mathematical framework that investigates two of the deepest mysteries in cosmology at the same time. Publishing their research in The Astrophysical Journal, Yun Chen and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggest their work could pave the way for vital corrections to the current ΛCDM model—alongside a long-awaited resolution to the Hubble tension.
Our Milky Way’s halo of hot gas is warmer to the “south” than the “north” because of an internal combustion engine-like effect that is compressing the gas like a piston, a new study has found. Computer simulations reveal that the Large Magellanic Cloud—a satellite galaxy below, or on the south side, of our own—attracts the Milky Way, causing gas in the southern half of the halo to compress and heat up.
Walking on the moon by 2030, building a lunar base, and then perhaps on to Mars: after 30 years of honing its expertise, China is challenging the United States’ supremacy in spaceflight.
An international team led by a researcher at the Chiba Institute of Technology has discovered an extremely rare phenomenon: a galaxy about 10 billion light-years away whose brightness dropped to one-twentieth of its original level in just 20 years. By combining multiwavelength observations with archival data spanning several decades, the researchers concluded that the fading was caused by a rapid decrease in the gas flowing into the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. The discovery shows that the activity of supermassive black holes can change dramatically on timescales short enough to be observed within a human lifetime.
In the heart of the Marais Poitevin regional nature park, the second-largest wetland in France, a scientific team led by a CNRS researcher has demonstrated the ability of clay soils to self-organize into geometric patterns. Known as mottureaux, these microreliefs, similar to hummocks, channel rainwater infiltration and promote plant biodiversity in marsh soils.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Observing in complementary wavelengths of light, the two space observatories provide scientists with a richer, more layered understanding of the gas giant’s atmosphere.
For the first time, astronomers have directly measured the speed of superheated gas billowing from a cauldron of stellar activity at the heart of M82, a nearby galaxy undergoing an extraordinary burst of star formation. The material is moving more than 2 million miles (over 3 million kilometers) per hour and appears to be the primary force driving a cooler, well-studied, galaxy-scale wind.
The mass extinction at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods was catastrophic, wiping out much of life on Earth. Vertebrate groups that dominated at the time, such as dinosaurs and many large marine reptiles, fell victim to the effects of the asteroid impact about 66 million years ago. However, the catastrophe did not affect all organisms to the same extent: turtles, for example, survived with only minimal losses. Their chance of survival was apparently linked to their diet: species with a preference for hard-shelled organisms survived the catastrophic event.
