Space

The mystery of what created a pair of craters on the far side of the Moon has been put to rest after a new study from the University of Arizona confirmed that the most likely cause was a spent rocket booster from China's Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission.

Phosphorus – a key ingredient for life as we know it – was thought to be relatively rare in space. But now, astronomers have detected a surprising amount of the stuff on the fringes of the galaxy, suggesting life may be more common in the cosmos.

France and Italy are teaming up to build a habitat for future moon bases with Franco-Italian technology company Thales Alenia Space and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) signing a contract to develop the Multi-Purpose Habitat for NASA's Artemis project.

ESA's next-generation Ariane 6 heavy rocket came another step closer to flight on November 23, 2023 as it completed a long-duration hot-fire test of the stacked booster's Vulcain 2.1 engine at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Researchers have found that deep space travel can cause long-lasting erectile dysfunction. With crewed space missions planned for the near future, the findings highlight the importance of considering astronauts’ sexual health.

It may sound like finding a ski resort in the Amazon, but a team of scientists from the Planetary Science Institute claim to have found evidence that the super-hot planet Mercury has subterranean salt glaciers at its north polar region.

Earth has been blasted by the second strongest ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray ever observed. While its origins remain unknown, astrophysicists are pointing the finger at the Local Void, a fundamentally empty area of the cosmos next to the Milky Way.

There aren't any organizations other than NASA that can claim they are operating on two different planets. The space agency is now using that reach to create better helicopter blades on Earth and to push its copter to greater heights on Mars.

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) unit aboard the Psyche spacecraft has switched on, establishing a super-speed laser data link at a distance of 10 million miles (16 million km), or 40 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The James Webb Space Telescope has made the first direct analysis of clouds on a nearby alien world. These aren’t just made of water vapor but also sand, which would move around the planet much like Earth’s water cycle.

The chances of finding extraterrestrial life have improved slightly after NASA announced that its Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the size of an Earth-sized exoplanet only 22 light-years from Earth, the nearest that passes in front of its star.

SpaceX's second launch attempt of its giant Starship rocket on Saturday once again ended in destruction, though the company declared the test flight a success, with the Starship second stage reaching the edge of space before contact was lost.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Earth was hit by the brightest gamma-ray bursts seen since the dawn of civilization. Now, a team of astronomers has assigned a value to the energy contained in those blasts and it's staggering to say the least.

To help combat the growing problem of space debris, a CubeSat launched by EnduroSat on November 11, 2023 called Exo-0 includes a 100-g (3.5-oz) device developed by Airbus that uses the Earth's magnetic field to prevent dead satellites from tumbling.

Astronomers have witnessed a phenomenon never seen before, a luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT) emitting more energy than hundreds of billions of stars the size of the Sun. Dubbed the Tasmanian Devil, it threw out energetic flares for months.