Opportunity’s final message home is not much to look at on its own. If you’re old enough to remember film cameras, it looks like the final exposure on a roll of film, developed but partly missing. It’s a suitable epitaph for Opportunity’s mission. Opportunity captured this image with the left half of its PanCam, or

The origins of the Solar System’s heavy elements such as gold and platinum have been a source of great interest to astronomers. One of the most popular theories is that they were scattered into space by neutron star collisions. New research, however, has found another origin: an oft-overlooked type of star explosion, or supernova. These,

Here on Earth we’re making big plans to send the first humans to Mars, but it looks like Starfleet may have gotten there first. In the expanse of the Hellas Planitia, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed a huge formation in the shape of the organisation’s famous chevron logo. “Enterprising viewers will make the discovery

Thanks to the far-reaching optics of the Hubble telescope, and some smart visible-light spectral analysis, scientists have detected what looks a lot like sodium chloride – or good old table salt – on Jupiter’s moon Europa. That means the salty ocean hidden just beneath the surface of this moon could be more like Earth’s oceans

Antlia 2, the “ghost of a galaxy” orbiting the Milky Way, is a dark horse in more ways than one. Not only is it so faint it was only just discovered last year, it may now be responsible for curious ripples in the hydrogen gas that makes up the Milky Way’s outer disc. According to

It was the year 2000 and scientists had never seen anything like it: astronomers reported evidence of “superflares” on distant stars – solar outbursts many thousands of times more energetic than typical solar flares. As researchers observed over subsequent studies, these intense eruptions were more common on young, rapidly rotating stars, and on stars exhibiting

The Moon is home to one of the largest known impact craters in the Solar System. At 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) across, the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the Moon’s far side covers nearly a quarter of the lunar surface – and there’s something massive buried beneath it. We can’t see it from here on Earth,

NASA just announced that it will officially allow regular citizens – not just certified astronauts – on board the International Space Station, as well as commercial and marketing activities. Tickets to the ISS won’t come cheap. NASA will be charging private companies about US$35,000 a night for use of the station’s facilities, according to The

Two months before the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon for the first time, another NASA capsule snuck tantalisingly close – only to become lost for decades. The Apollo 10 mission was supposed to be a “dry-run“, in which all operations except the actual lunar landing were performed. With two popular cartoon characters as the

Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet. We’re sober, yo! The fact of the matter is,

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says there’s a very simple reason his other company, Blue Origin, is working on a giant lunar lander to make moon travel as easy as an aeroplane flight: Humanity’s very survival relies on colonizing space, starting with the moon. So he told attendees during his time on stage Thursday at Amazon’s

On 25 May 2019, a strange, double-asteroid (1999 KW4) flew past Earth at a distance and speed that is likely to make a lot of people nervous. As always, there was no danger, since the asteroid passed Earth at a minimum distance of 5.2 million km (3.23 million miles), over 15 times greater than the

A colossal magnetic field stretching between two clusters of galaxies has been observed for the first time. Roughly a billion light-years away, the ‘bridge’ of radio-emitting plasma spans 10 million light-years, following a filament in the mysterious cosmic web that connects the Universe. The space between clusters of galaxies isn’t completely dark and empty. Long

The most remote location on Earth has many names: It’s called Point Nemo (Latin for ‘no one’) and the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. Most precisely, its exact coordinates are 48 degrees 52.6 minutes south latitude and 123 degrees 23.6 minutes west longitude. The spot is about 2,250 km (1,400 miles) from any spot of land

Astronomers peering into the dark heart of the Milky Way galaxy have seen a vast, rotating disc of cool gas, circling the supermassive black hole that therein resides. Long has this disc been hypothesised; now, it is revealed in all its turbulent glory. “We were the first to image this elusive disk and study its

PDS 70, the star that last year gave us the first ever confirmed direct image of a planet being born, had an extra trick up its protoplanetary disc. In follow-up observations, astronomers have found a second planet – and managed to take photographs of both. This gives it the added honour of being only the

The 50th anniversary of You-Know-What is coming up and LEGO is getting in on the celebration. The much-beloved company has released a replica of the Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Lander. The new lander is part of LEGO’s Creator Expert collection. LEGO teamed up with NASA on this effort, and the model boasts quite a few

A huge discovery that was incompatible with our current theories of dark matter and galaxy formation may have just been resolved. After a new analysis, astronomers have determined that NGC1052-DF2 – found last year to contain absolutely no dark matter – is a lot closer to us than previous calculations estimated. Which means that it

The first film of a total solar eclipse has been restored by specialists at the British Film Institute (BFI) and made available for viewing. The film was taken in North Caroline in 1900 by Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne was a British man who was a magician turned film-maker. He took the film as part of a

Death, for stars, isn’t always a straightforward affair. In fact, it can get downright weird. Astronomers have just identified a star made from the remnants of two dead stars that fused together, which reignited fusion in the core – bringing the new star back to life. The star is called J005311, 10,000 light-years away in

The Universe is so unimaginably big, and it’s positively teeming with an almost infinite supply of potentially life-giving worlds. So where the heck is everybody? At its heart, this is what’s called the Fermi Paradox: the perplexing scientific anomaly that despite there being billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy – let alone outside

Clay is a big deal on Mars because it often forms in contact with water. Find clay, and you’ve usually found evidence of water. And the nature, history, and current water budget on Mars are all important to understanding that planet, and if it ever supported life. Right now, MSL Curiosity is at Mt Sharp

Curiosity is one busy rover. Since touching down on Mars in 2012, it’s helped astronomers locate the planet’s missing methane, delivered new evidence that Mars was once wet, and even provided clues of extraterrestrial life. But all work and no play makes Curiosity a dull bot, so it recently kicked back to do some cloud-watching

Based on this recently released snapshot of the night sky captured by NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), we can safely assume Superman gets no sleep at night. Just look at that thing.  The sparkling dots and tangled loops are the result of nearly two years of effort to study cosmic sources of X-rays

Astronomers have detected the presence of ammonia mixed in with the rusty colouration of Pluto’s surface. This could have fascinating implications for the icy dwarf planet, as researchers have detailed in two new studies. Firstly, that ammonia-tainted ice hints at a salty, organic-rich ocean hiding beneath Pluto’s surface – one that may contain the right

Every 11 years, the Sun cycles through from riotous flare and sunspot activity to a quieter period, before ramping up again. It’s almost as regular as clockwork, and for years astronomers have been wondering what causes it. Now, they’ve proposed a new solution. Even though the Solar System’s planets are much smaller than the Sun,

When you get close to a blazing star, you can discern a region where medium-sized planets like our own icy Neptune are scarce. Known as Hot Neptunian Deserts, these rings of intense irradiation and heat are found right across the Universe – but they may not be as inhospitable as we once thought. Like Icarus

For the first time, researchers have successfully generated electricity from americium, one of the radioactive elements we’ve pinned our hopes on as a promising alternative to rocket fuel, for powering farther and farther ventures out into space. It’s a new milestone in experiments with the synthetic element, which doesn’t occur naturally but is a by-product

A star system located some 16,000 light-years away from Earth is flaring in an unexpected manner, and scientists are working to explain what’s going on with it. The star in question is called AG Draconis: a well-known binary star that’s been observed by astronomers since the late 19th century. But while AG Draconis may have

You know how stars do. They’re out there, doing their thing, fusing a whole bunch of hydrogen into helium, shining up the joint. But some stars are just a little bit different from the norm. Not content with simply lighting up the night sky like a giant disco, they zoom, shimmer, dim and even hang

A strange feature on the surface of Mars has kept scientists guessing about its origin. It’s a surface deposit of a mineral which is more common in the interiors of planets. A new study shows that this interior mineral was probably brought to the surface by an ancient explosive volcano. Nili Fossae is located in

Humans and our primate relatives differ in many ways, but the fact we walk on two legs is one of the most obvious. Precisely how our ancestors evolved that trait is a well-debated mystery. Now, there’s a new idea. What if one of the contributing factors was giant explosions in the sky? It’s not as

A stunning image of Earth taken from the orbital perspective of the International Space Station (ISS) gives a unique glimpse of an everyday phenomenon too easily taken for granted. In a photo posted to Twitter last week, NASA astronaut Christina H. Koch showed what it looks like from the ISS as darkness creeps over one

The first launch this year of a Roscosmos Soyuz 2-1b rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia went off without a hitch. Yes, even despite a bolt of lightning that struck the booster as it made its ascent. At 06:23 UTC on Monday 27 May, the rocket lifted off to deliver a Glonass-M navigation satellite

Last week SpaceX launched 60 Starlink telecommunication satellites – the first major launch of its ambitious fleet of up to 12,000 satellites, with the goal to eventually create ultra-fast internet services around the world. The launch of the 227 kg (500 pound) satellites went off without a hitch, but a spectacular video of the ‘train’

South Africa’s Makhonjwa Mountains are home to some of the oldest rocks on the planet – but not everything in this magnificent landscape originated on Earth. Scientists say they’ve discovered trace evidence of extraterrestrial organic matter buried within volcanic sediment from over 3.3 billion years ago. “This is the very first time that we have found

Humans may not be able to burp properly in space, but we can now edit a genome. For the first time, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have used CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the DNA of brewer’s yeast. The goal wasn’t to create super space yeast. The astronauts were studying how DNA repair mechanisms work

There’s no sense in sugar-coating it – Venus is a hellish place! It is the hottest planet in the Solar System, with atmospheric temperatures that are hot enough to melt lead. The air is also a toxic plume, composed predominantly of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid rain clouds. And yet, scientists hypothesize that Venus was

Somewhere in the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, something wonky is happening. A few objects are orbiting differently from everything else, and we don’t know why. A popular hypothesis is that an unseen object called Planet Nine could be messing with these orbits; astronomers are avidly searching for this planet. But

Earth will be getting not one but two visitors from space this weekend. Astronomers expect an asteroid known as 1999 KW4 to swing by the Earth at around 7:05 p.m. ET on Saturday — and when it does, it’ll bring along its very own moon. “It’s one of the closest binary flybys probably in recent

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, successfully launched its first five dozen Starlink telecommunications satellites on Thursday night. If all goes according to plan in the coming weeks, the new fleet of experimental spacecraft may pave the way for a global, ultra-fast, and lucrative internet product, possibly within a couple of years. “Starlink

Mars and Earth may have a lot of things in common, but the processes that sculpt their sand dunes are not among them. Exactly how Martian sand moves around crevasses and impact craters has been something of a mystery – but we might finally have a better idea. Planetary scientists have comprehensively revealed how the

China attempted to launch a top-secret military payload into space early Thursday morning, but the attempt ended in a rain of wreckage. The loss of the Long March 4C rocket and its satellite marks the nation’s second launch failure of 2019. The first was a commercial launch in March by the Chinese aerospace startup OneSpace.

Sometimes planets turn up where you least expect – such as in data from the Kepler space-hunting telescope that had already been analysed. It’s there that astronomers have found a treasure trove – 18 Earth-sized exoplanets, including one that may be habitable. The largest is a little over twice the size of Earth. The smallest,

NASA has chosen 11 American companies to help them build the next lunar landers that will carry humans to the surface of the Moon. The 11 companies will conduct studies and work on prototype landers in the coming years. It’s all part of NASA’s Artemis mission, and the mission’s 2024 date with the surface of

You may not realise it, because we always see the same side of it from Earth, but the Moon is pretty weird. The side we see is very different from the far side, which is always facing away from us, and the contrast between these two sides has been a baffling oddity. Now we have a

The Solar System might be a soggier place than we previously thought – even in the glacially cold reaches of the Kuiper Belt. There, dwarf planet Pluto could be harbouring liquid oceans under a shell of nitrogen ice. It was thought that the temperature required to maintain a liquid ocean on Pluto was too high

Using the combined might of two of Hawaii’s powerful telescopes, astronomers have captured what they are describing as “groundbreaking” sharp new images of a planetary system still in the process of being born.  They also found no evidence of three previously detected planets. The star is LkCa 15, a young, Sun-like T Tauri star 473