Space

Astronomers have discovered a black hole that may set a new record or two – it seems to be both the smallest black hole ever detected, and the closest one to Earth found so far. It's only 1,500 light-years away and has a mass of just three Suns.

Perseverance has notched up another first by extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. The rover's toaster-sized MOXIE unit converted carbon dioxide into about 5.4 grams of oxygen – a process that may one day help astronauts live off the land.

New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance, celebrating by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1 – or at least, the patch of sky where it is.

NASA has made history today, conducting the very first powered flight on another planet. The Mars Helicopter Ingenuity successfully took to the Red Planet skies for a brief jaunt, which will hopefully be the first of several.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a contract to develop the lunar lander for the Artemis program that will ferry humans to and from the surface of the Moon in 2024. SpaceX’s Starship prototype beat out competing companies Blue Origin and Dynetics for the job.

The mystery of fast radio bursts may be closer to being solved. Astronomers studying a repeating signal from a nearby galaxy have detected radiation at the lowest frequency of any FRB found so far, providing new potential hints about their origin.

Blue Origin came a step closer to crewed flights today as ground personnel stood in for astronauts during the 15th New Shepard suborbital space mission, carrying out preflight procedures and re-entering after the flight to rehearse post-flight procedures.

A NASA next-generation rover designed to sniff out water and ice at the lunar south pole has just been assigned a ride, with SpaceX's Falcon Heavy given the job of launching it along with a medium-capacity lander to the Moon in 2023.

DARPA's nuclear space rocket project is progressing, with contracts awarded to General Atomics, Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin for the first phase of a program to place a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) demonstrator into low Earth orbit by 2025.

Northrop Grumman and its SpaceLogistics LLC subsidiary have made the first successful docking of their robotic service vehicle with a fully operational communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, beginning a five-year life extension mission.

Sixty years ago on Monday, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a variation of a rocket originally designed to launch nuclear weapons to become the first person to orbit the Earth.

NASA's Ingenuity robotic helicopter has survived its first night on the surface of Mars. After being deployed on Martian soil, the miniature rotorcraft had to keep itself warm through the night for the first time using only its internal power.