Space News & Blog Articles

The luminous, hot star Wolf-Rayet 124 (WR 124) is prominent at the center of the James Webb Space Telescope’s composite image combining near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a rare glimpse of a massive star 15,000 light-years away shedding a halo of gas and dust, seeding the cosmos with elements necessary for forming other stars, planets, and the building blocks of life.

An image of a crater rim near the moon's south pole shows how NASA's ShadowCam instrument is shining new light on the darker regions of our celestial neighbor.

A video of a fireball streaking across the sky likely shows a Chinese rocket section that burned up in the atmosphere above Texas on March 7.

A camera aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket caught Earth as a beautiful blue marble in a striking new video filmed from orbit.

The UN's final IPCC report warns that drastic action must be taken immediately, but staving off disaster is within humanity's grasp.

"Star Wars Jedi: Survivor" just got new plot details, gameplay images and screenshots ahead of its release in April.

Four big asteroids hit Earth in the past million years alone, according to a new study, suggesting that the space-rock danger is higher than previously thought. But not everyone agrees with the result.

Careful scrutiny of the debris from the impact of NASA's DART mission into Dimorphos has not found any evidence for water ice on the asteroid, nor the residue of thruster fuel from the spacecraft.

The Hakuto-R moon lander entered lunar orbit late Monday night (March 20), notching a huge milestone for the Japanese company ispace and private spaceflight in general.

An organic compound that's part of the RNA molecules that transmit genetic information in cells has been discovered in samples from the asteroid Ryugu, suggesting the stuff of life came from space.

1. Neptune is the fourth largest planet in the Solar System, with a diameter of about 49,244 km (30,598 miles).
2. It was named after the Roman god of the sea, Neptune.
3. Neptune has the strongest winds in the Solar System, with speeds that can reach up to 2,100 kilometers per hour (1,300 miles per hour).
4. It takes Neptune about 164.8 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun.
5. Neptune is the coldest planet in the Solar System, with temperatures that can drop as low as -220 degrees Celsius (-364 degrees Fahrenheit).
6. Neptune has 14 known moons, the largest of which is Triton. Triton is one of the coldest known objects in the Solar System, with a surface temperature of about -235 degrees Celsius (-391 degrees Fahrenheit).
7. Neptune’s atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen, helium, and methane gas, which gives the planet its blue color.
8. Neptune was first discovered in 1846 by the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, based on mathematical calculations of irregularities in the orbit of Uranus.
9. The Voyager 2 spacecraft is the only spacecraft to have flown by Neptune, in 1989. It provided the most detailed information about the planet and its moons.
10. Neptune’s magnetic field is tilted at an angle of about 47 degrees to its rotational axis, which is one of the most extreme tilts among the planets in the Solar System.

Jupiter will meet up with the moon before joining Mercury in late March, after which it will disappear in the glare of the sun until it reappears in May.

ESA's Gaia mission has been collecting data on millions of space objects like stars and asteroids to build an extensive cosmic record. Now, to take it up a notch, it needs your eyes.

Astronomers have discovered several fascinating features in galaxy cluster Abell 1213 such as a central galaxy with a 1.66 million light-year-long radio "tail" and remains of galactic mergers.

The dark skies of the new moon will offer skywatchers the chance to spot Ceres tonight (March 21), as the dwarf planet reaches opposition.

Rocket Lab plans to launch two satellites early Wednesday morning (March 22), on a mission that includes a booster recovery at sea. Watch it live here.

A large elliptical galaxy spewing a black hole–powered jet might have eaten its neighbors, leaving it on its own.

ESA Impact – March 2023 Council edition

First hibernation studies with human subjects could be feasible within a decade, a European Space Agency (ESA) researcher thinks.