JPL

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has engineered a self-propelled, autonomous robot snake designed to explore extreme extraterrestrial terrain. Its first-of-a-kind propulsion system means it can boldly go where no robot snake has gone before.

The first aircraft to fly on another planet has hit a new milestone. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has recently clocked up its 50th flight, and achieved a new altitude record in the process.

It may look like a lightsaber sitting on the surface of Mars, but this titanium tube is a sample canister dropped off by Perseverance. This could eventually be the first pristine sample of Martian soil and rock returned to Earth in a future mission.

NASA’s InSight Mars lander has made two major new discoveries. By sensing seismic activity from the Red Planet, the craft has now detected a large meteorite impact, and found evidence of magma pools and volcanic activity still occurring today.

Subsurface oceans on moons are some of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth. NASA is now funding a project to develop a swarm of small swimming robots that would explore these alien oceans for signs of extraterrestrial life.

The hunt for planets beyond our solar system has now reached a major milestone. A new batch of 65 exoplanets brings the total number of confirmed planets beyond our solar system to over 5,000 – with potentially hundreds of billions left to find.

NASA has monitored potentially hazardous asteroids for decades, but some factors couldn't be accounted for. The new Sentry-II system has now gone online, allowing astronomers to calculate the orbits and impact chances of asteroids far more precisely.

In 2018 astronomers announced the discovery of lakes of liquid water on Mars at the south pole. Sadly, a trio of new papers refutes the claim, with new experiments suggesting that the “water” signal was more likely produced by frozen clay instead.

Editor’s note: New details about this fascinating object have emerged since we wrote this article – here's the latest update.

A team has made some intriguing discoveries in the outer regions of the Milky Way. Astronomers mapped the fringes of the sparse halo that envelops our home galaxy, and found the wake of a dwarf galaxy on an eventual collision course with the Milky Way.

A growing body of evidence points to the Red Planet being much bluer in its ancient past. Where all that water went is a key question, with many scientists believing it escaped into space. New analysis suggests another answer: it retreated underground.

A quantum internet would be much faster and more secure than the regular web – and now it may be one step closer to reality. Scientists have used quantum teleportation to send information over long distances, with a higher fidelity than ever before.