The 'Oumuamua Mystery May Not Be So Mysterious After All
The first interstellar object to visit the Solar System “defied expectations” in 2017, according to a new study, and…
Collecting Samples From Asteroid Bennu May Be Harder Than NASA Realized, New Findings Suggest
NASA scientists have released a boatload of data from OSIRIS-REx, the spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Bennu. There are…
New Horizons Team Shares Amazing New Details About Kuiper Belt Object MU69
Scientists with the New Horizons mission gathered together in Texas yesterday to discuss the latest findings about…
The Hayabusa2 Mission to Asteroid Ryugu Just Dropped Its First Scientific Results
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 mission has released its first batch of scientific results on…
A Huge Asteroid Exploded Above Earth, and You Totally Missed It
The second-largest asteroid to hit Earth in the last 30 years went undetected, until now.
Mercury, Not Venus, Is the Closest Planet to Earth
A team of scientists just demonstrated something that might shock you: Mercury, not Venus, is the closest planet to…
Opportunity's Final Panorama Gives Us One Last View From Inside the Endeavour Crater
NASA may have declared its Opportunity rover lost, but we’ll always have its data and bank of raw images. The mission…
The UK Royal Mint Is Putting a Black Hole on a Coin to Honor Stephen Hawking
The United Kingdom’s Royal Mint will honor the work of Stephen Hawking with a commemorative coin featuring the…
50 Years Later, Precious Moon Samples Will Finally Be Opened
During the Apollo missions, NASA smartly set aside some lunar materials knowing future scientists would likely be…
NASA Satellite Captures Optical Illusion Where the Moon Appears to Go Backwards
Earlier this week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured a strange series of images in which the Moon appears…
How Heavy Is the Milky Way?
By combining data from the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has come up with the…
New Video Shows the Critical Moment Hayabusa2 Fired a Bullet Into Ryugu Asteroid
An encouraging new video released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shows Hayabusa2 briefly touching down on…
Astronomers Around the World Are Training in Case a Giant Asteroid Threatens Earth
On October 12, 2017, a 20-meter asteroid passed just 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) from Earth. For weeks, dozens of…
Extreme Dwarf Planet FarFarOut Could Be the Most Distant Known Object in the Solar System
Just months after discovering FarOut, the most distant known object in the Solar System, the same team of astronomers…
Spacecraft Spots Evidence That Groundwater Once Saturated Mars
Scientists report finding evidence for an ancient planet-wide groundwater system on Mars, according to a new study. The…
Neptune's Smallest Moon Finally Has a Name: Hippocamp [Updated]
Introducing Hippocamp—the smallest of Neptune’s seven inner moons. The recently discovered moon likely formed from a…
Japanese Spacecraft to Shoot Bullet at Asteroid This Week
The spacecraft Hayabusa2's first touchdown onto the asteroid Ryugu is scheduled for this week. If successful, the craft…
Enormous Stream of Stars Discovered in Southern Sky
Scientists have discovered a nearby “stellar stream” containing thousands of stars spanning the southern sky. They made…
Neutron Star Collisions Could Reveal Mysterious Quark Matter
Scientists are dreaming up ways to probe the nature of the Universe’s smallest bits—quarks—by observing ultra-dense…