America’s nuclear spacecraft is heading to Mars, and it’s bringing helicopters
For decades, nuclear propulsion has been a fixture of aerospace engineering proposals and government studies, always promising, never…
Distance in space is an illusion
Andromeda sounds far away because 2.5 million light-years sounds far away. It lands with authority. It feels exact.…
Lightning bolts on Jupiter are up to 100 times stronger than Earth’s
On Jupiter, a storm doesn’t just brew, it can simmer for centuries. The planet’s atmosphere is a perpetual…
A million SpaceX satellites will ruin the night sky
More than 10,000 Starlink satellites currently orbit the Earth. We see them crawling across dark skies, no matter…
Backyard Astrophotographer’s Images Play at the End of ‘Project Hail Mary’
Rod Prazeres’ images appear during the end credits. A photographer has expressed his delight as his images of…
Scientists are rethinking how young galaxies formed their magnetic fields
Magnetic fields that stretch across thousands of light-years should take a very long time to organize. Standard dynamo…
As SpaceX Launches its 10,000th Satellite, A Photographer Captures the Impact on the Night Sky
‘Swamped Skies’ by Joshua Rozells. This week SpaceX passed an eye-watering milestone: it launched its 10,000th satellite into…
NASA’s Hubble Caught a Comet Breaking Up in Real Time, and the Images Are Wild
Have you ever turned to look at something at the exact moment something unbelievably cool happened? Imagine if…
Where are the top places for stargazing and starbathing in Europe?
As of March 2026, more than 200 locations in 22 countries across the world have been certified as…
African Telescopes Are Driving Frontier Space Discoveries
After years of investments, African telescopes are emerging as global leaders in frontier astronomy. From South Africa’s MeerKAT…
Enrichment by the first stars in a relic dwarf galaxy
Flaugher, B. et al. The dark energy camera. Astron. J. 150, 150 (2015). Article ADS Google Scholar Beers,…
Asteroid Ryugu Contains All 5 DNA and RNA Building Blocks, Study Shows
Early Earth was a brutally hot, volcanically active, radiation-bathed wasteland. Somehow amid this hostility, the necessary ingredients for…