Space missions have long exemplified humankind's indomitable spirit and boundless ambition. Once the reserve of nations, space is fact opening up to commercial enterprises and could soon be the must-go destination for tourists – provided the accumulation of debris doesn't turn Earth's orbit into a no-go zone. All this comes as missions beyond the Moon provide greater insights into our solar system and more powerful telescopes give us a glimpse at exoplanets light years away.
New Atlas keeps you up to date with the latest space news and fantastic images from all corners of the Universe.
By their nature, stars burn bright – so when they start dimming and fading, scientists pay attention. Now, astronomers have observed a strangely-twinkling star and found that it might be the result of a collision between proto-planets orbiting it, and the star gobbling up the remains.
Continue Reading
A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifted off from the company's Texas launch site at 10:11 am CDT on July 19. On its ninth test flight, engineers studied how the launch system operates on the edge of its design envelope.
Continue Reading
Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Chile have achieved first light with a cutting-edge adaptive optics mode for the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), designed to remove interference caused by Earth’s atmosphere.
Continue Reading
With dozens of moons whizzing around Jupiter, it makes sense that a few have slipped under the radar, but the latest discovery is still a surprisingly large haul. Astronomers have announced the detection of 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter, including one particularly reckless “oddball.”
Continue Reading
The Virgin Galactic spin-off, Virgin Orbit, has announced that it will start launching satellites into orbit from Spaceport Cornwall at Cornwall Airport Newquay in the UK by 2021, using rockets dropped from a modified Boeing 747.
Continue Reading
UK Space Agency has announced that Melness on the north coast of Scotland has been chosen for the country's first vertical launch spaceport with an initial grant of £2.5 million (US$3.3 million) to develop the site, which will be used to launch small satellites into orbit.
Continue Reading
The MeerKAT radio telescope array is finally up and running in South Africa. To show off what the facility can do, astronomers have pointed all 64 antennas towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and snapped one of the clearest shots ever taken of the mysterious region.
Continue Reading
The David Malin Awards is an astrophotography competition based in Australia celebrating the greatest astronomical photos from the last twelve months. This year’s overall winner was a magnificent image from Luke Tscharke showing the Milky Way rising over a lake at night in southern Tasmania.
Continue Reading
About 3.7 billion years ago, a neutrino was thrown out of a blazar and launched towards Earth. The ghostly particle was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and traced back to its point of origin, helping to confirm the most distant neutrino source ever identified.
Continue Reading
Findings from three major world observatories confirm that a very rare binary asteroid came within a cosmic whisker of Earth on June 21, 2017 The near-Earth asteroid (actually two asteroids) passed within 3.7 million of our planet for the first time in 170 years before heading out into deep space.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning