How Saving Earth Could Ruin Orbit

By Andy Tomaswick - March 02, 2026 07:10 PM UTC | Observing
Satellite imaging is increasingly important to every field from crop monitoring to poverty reduction. So it’s no surprise that there have been more and more satellites launched to try to meet that growing demand. But with more satellites comes more risk for collision - and the debris field that comes after the collision. A new paper in Advanced in Space Research from John Mackintosh and his co-authors at the University of Manchester looks at how we might use mission design to mitigate some of the hazards of increasing the number of satellites even more
Continue reading

How to Weigh a Killer Asteroid at 22 Kilometers per Second

By Andy Tomaswick - March 02, 2026 04:19 PM UTC | Missions
Estimating a mass for a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is perhaps the single most important thing to understand about it, after its trajectory. Actually doing so isn’t easy though, as the mass for objects in the tens to hundreds of kilometers in size are too small to have their mass calculated by traditional radio-frequency tracking techniques. A new paper from Justin Atchison of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and his co-authors proposes a method that could find the mass of asteroids even on the smaller end of that range, but will require precise coordination.
Continue reading

Predicting the Sun's Most Violent Outbursts

By Mark Thompson - March 02, 2026 09:38 AM UTC | Solar Astronomy
In the first four days of February this year the Sun unleashed six powerful X-class flares in rapid succession including an X8.1 that was the strongest in several years. And now, scientists have announced a new forecasting system that could give us up to a year's warning before the most dangerous solar storms arrive. The extraordinary thing is that the system has already been proved right by eruptions nobody knew about until after the forecast was made.
Continue reading

How Long Do Civilisations Last?

By Mark Thompson - March 02, 2026 09:25 AM UTC | Astrobiology
In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with colleagues and asked a question that has haunted astronomers ever since. If the universe is so vast, so old, and so full of stars, where is everybody? A new study has turned that question around and come up with an answer that is quietly unsettling. If intelligent life is common in the Galaxy, the mathematics suggests it cannot last very long.
Continue reading

What the Moon Rocks Were Hiding

By Mark Thompson - March 02, 2026 09:25 AM UTC | Planetary Science
The rocks that twelve astronauts carried home from the Moon fifty years ago have just rewritten our understanding of lunar history. A new analysis of Apollo samples has finally resolved one of the most stubborn debates in planetary science and the answer turns out to be one that neither side of the argument was entirely right about.
Continue reading

Laser-Based 3D Printing Could Build Future Bases on the Moon

By Matthew Williams - March 02, 2026 12:16 AM UTC | Missions
Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.
Continue reading

The Toughest Animals in the Universe Just Got a New Job

By Mark Thompson - March 01, 2026 11:19 PM UTC | Astrobiology
They are the toughest animals on Earth and possibly the key to surviving on Mars. Tardigrades, the microscopic creatures nicknamed 'water bears', have survived the vacuum of space, the crushing pressure of the deep ocean and temperatures that would kill virtually anything else. Now a new study has put them to work as unlikely pioneers, testing whether the hostile soil of Mars could ever support life and the results are full of surprises.
Continue reading

The Comet From Another Star

By Mark Thompson - March 01, 2026 11:13 PM UTC | Planetary Science
A visitor from another star system has just had its portrait taken by a spacecraft on its way to Jupiter and the image is superb. Comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar object ever discovered passing through our Solar System, has been captured in stunning detail by ESA's JUICE mission, revealing a glowing halo of gas, a sweeping tail, and hints of jets erupting from its ancient, icy heart. But the picture itself is just the beginning of the story.
Continue reading

Europe's Answer to Starship

By Mark Thompson - March 01, 2026 11:03 PM UTC | Space Exploration
SpaceX's Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built and it may be about to change everything. But researchers at the German Aerospace Centre have been asking a question: does Europe have an answer? Their new study, built on meticulous analysis of Starship's own flight data, suggests the answer is yes although it will require a fundamentally different approach, and a willingness to think differently.
Continue reading

Growing Future Meals in Space Will Require Human Waste

By Carolyn Collins Petersen - February 28, 2026 08:09 PM UTC | Space Exploration
Future farmers on the Moon and Mars will have a big challenge: how to grow healthy food in two extremely unhealthy environments. That's because the soil on both worlds isn't at all hospitable to plants and animals. Neither are other conditions. Both are irradiated worlds, Mars has a thin atmosphere and the Moon has none at all. So, how will future colonists on either world grow their food?
Continue reading

The Universe's Most Extraordinary Construction Site

By Mark Thompson - February 28, 2026 08:39 AM UTC | Cosmology
Astronomers have discovered a extraordinary celestial construction site hiding behind a natural magnifying glass in space and what they've found is unlike anything seen before. A cluster of at least 11 galaxies, all building stars at a ferocious rate in the early universe, has been caught in the act of becoming one of the most massive structures in the universe.
Continue reading

The Stars That Lit Up the Early Milky Way

By Mark Thompson - February 28, 2026 08:04 AM UTC | Extragalactic
Astronomers have used a special class of ancient, pulsating stars as celestial lighthouses to map the earliest chapter of our Galaxy's life and what they've found is rewriting what we thought we knew about how the Milky Way was born. By building the largest ever catalogue of these stellar beacons and tracing their movements back billions of years, the team has uncovered surprising similarities between our Galaxy's earliest structures, and even found evidence of the same story playing out in our nearest galactic neighbour.
Continue reading

Would Earth Still Be Habitable Without Us?

By Mark Thompson - February 28, 2026 07:35 AM UTC | Astrobiology
Scientists have built a working model of Earth without any life on it and what they found might change how we search for aliens. By simulating 4.5 billion years of our planet's evolution minus every bacterium, plant, and creature that ever existed, they've created a new tool for spotting genuinely habitable worlds among the thousands of rocky planets soon to be studied by the next generation of space telescopes.
Continue reading

Jupiter Is Smaller and Flatter Than Previously Thought

By Laurence Tognetti, MSc - February 28, 2026 03:29 AM UTC | Planetary Science
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has proudly boasted about this since time immemorial, with its scientific confirmation occurring by Galileo Galilei in 1610. It was later found that Jupiter has a bulging equator caused by its rapid rotation, turbulent atmosphere, and complex interior mechanisms despite its massive size, and scientists have even measured its “waistline” down to a tenth of a kilometer. Now, imagine being the largest planet in the solar system and you’re told you’re not as big as you thought. Where probably most humans would be thrilled to find this out, how do you respond if you’re Jupiter?
Continue reading