Space

What astronomers initially thought was a single distant radio galaxy has turned out to be something far more interesting: a dense cluster of at least six galaxies in the process of merging into one. The discovery, made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), offers an unprecedented direct view of how giant galaxies assembled […]

Astronomers have detected a rare damped millisecond oscillation pattern in a fast radio burst, offering one of the clearest signals yet that these enigmatic cosmic flashes originate from young, highly magnetized neutron stars. The study, led by Shuo Xiao and Di Li of Guizhou Normal University and Tsinghua University, analyzed publicly available data from the […]

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected ultraviolet light escaping from a galaxy that existed just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, a feat astronomers previously considered impossible. The discovery provides direct evidence that compact clusters of hot, massive stars, not just black holes, were responsible for clearing the neutral hydrogen fog that once filled […]

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known object from beyond our Solar System, has been wandering the galaxy for 10 to 12 billion years, making it almost as old as the universe itself and one of the most ancient objects ever studied up close by human instruments. The finding, published June 22 in Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10771-6), […]

NASA’s launch infrastructure is approaching a breaking point. A new report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) warns that Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia will operate at near capacity by 2028 to 2029, driven by a surge in commercial launch activity that has outpaced the aging […]

The search for alien life just got a practical new tool. Researchers at Stanford University have developed a planetary habitability model that goes beyond the traditional habitable zone, allowing astronomers to quickly identify which rocky exoplanets are most likely to sustain the atmospheres needed for life as we know it. The Smaller Than Earth Habitability […]

Exploding stars have left their radioactive fingerprint on our planet. A new study published in Nature Astronomy has detected traces of radioactive iron and plutonium in deep-sea crust samples, revealing that Earth has been gently dusted with the debris of nearby supernovae and a much rarer neutron star merger over the past 10 million years. […]

NASA’s plan to deorbit the International Space Station into the remote South Pacific Ocean is drawing sharp criticism from ocean conservation groups, who argue the agency is preparing to dump 460 tons of debris into the sea with no environmental impact assessment. The ISS, which has been continuously occupied since November 2000, is approaching the […]

Featured image: Artist’s impression of the TOI-201 system showing the brown dwarf on its eccentric orbit interacting with the inner planets. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The planetary system around the star TOI-201, located 366 light-years away in the constellation Pictor, should not exist by any conventional model of planetary formation. Yet it does, and astronomers are calling […]

Featured image: Satellite ground station in Namibia handed over by China in February 2026. Credit: Xinhua/Reuters The United States is on track to permanently lose influence over Africa’s rapidly expanding space industry to China, and the window for meaningful competition is closing, according to a stark new analysis published by SpaceNews. Writing in the space […]