Harry Baker

Rocket start-up SpinLaunch wants to catapult hundreds of flattened "microsatellites" into space at once, using a cannon-like machine that accelerates objects by spinning them. The first orbital demonstration is scheduled for next year.

A pair of white dwarfs, located just 150 light-years from Earth, appears doomed to die in a type 1a supernova that will shine brighter than anything currently visible in the night sky. But humanity — and our planet — will be long gone before this happens.

Comet SWAN25F was discovered using photos from the European Space Agency's SOHO spacecraft and can currently be spied using backyard equipment — but it could also become visible to the naked eye in the next few weeks.

Video footage captured by NASA's Perseverance rover shows a small "dust devil" merging with a much larger twister on the surface of Mars.

Researchers bombarded lichens with a year's worth of Martian radiation in just 5 hours — and they survived, hinting that the extremophiles could potentially live on the Red Planet.

SpaceX's Starship has been awarded a NASA contract that will allow it to be considered for future missions. However, recent explosive tests have shown the supersized spacecraft is still far from mission-ready.

The recently launched Fram2 mission, which is funded and led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, will attempt to grow mushrooms, test out hormone diapers and X-ray civilian astronauts. However, experts say that these novel experiments are unlikely to yield meaningful results.

An eerie new video from ESA's Solar Orbiter shows a towering 'cyclone' of plasma exhibiting behaviors never seen before on our sun.

A giant whirlpool of light, known as a "SpaceX spiral," was recently spotted swirling across the night sky over Europe as a Falcon 9 rocket prepared to reenter Earth's atmosphere after deploying top-secret cargo.

Skygazers have been waiting for over a year to see a recurrent nova that creates a temporary, super-bright star every 80 years or so. A new study suggests that it could finally happen this week — but nothing is certain.

The hefty space rock 2014 TN17 is large enough to wipe out a city, but it will pose no risk to our planet when it sails by this Wednesday (March 26). Researchers will monitor it carefully during its close approach.

U.K. start-up Pulsar Fusion has unveiled plans to build a fleet of reusable nuclear fusion-powered rockets, known as Sunbirds, that could cut journey times across the solar system in half. But not everyone is convinced.

As Venus approaches its inferior conjunction, astrophotographers have snapped some striking shots of the crescent planet looking like a giant rainbow in space.

A quartet of small, rocky exoplanets likely circle Barnard's Star, around 6 light-years from Earth, putting them in contention as targets of missions for future human generations.

Earth from space Satellite images taken more than three decades apart show the disappearance of Iceland's Okjökull, the first glacier to be officially declared dead as a result of human-caused climate change.

The solar system has many more moons than the one we can see in the sky. But how many do we actually know about? And how many more are waiting to be discovered?

Earth from space A 2022 satellite photo shows a large plume of discolored water rising from the undersea Kavachi volcano, during an eruption that likely scattered the sharks that normally dwell there.

New research suggests that a binary pair of Kuiper Belt objects, known as the Altjira system, is actually made up of three separate bodies orbiting one another in a complex triad. This rare orbital configuration is often referred to as the "three-body problem."

A newly unveiled astronaut photo shows a "gigantic jet" shooting upward from a thunderstorm above Louisiana in November 2024.

Earth from space This 2023 astronaut photo shows a series of slowly moving "star dunes" in the Erg Chebbi region of Morocco. Most of these massive structures are likely several centuries old.

Chinese scientists claim to have found a new way of injecting helium into rocket engines, which could be used to make missiles that are much harder to detect or intercept. The new technology was allegedly inspired by the faulty spacecraft that "stranded" NASA astronauts on the ISS last year.

Earth from space This 2022 astronaut photo reveals a menagerie of hidden oceanographic features surrounding a pair of Greek islands, including giant spinning currents and rarely seen "internal waves."