The global dust storm on Mars could soon let in enough sunlight for the Opportunity rover to recharge.

NASA solves a Mars mystery after analyzing a strange flake-like object.

High-fidelity simulators are key. By Loren Grush.

New Horizons is the first spacecraft in nearly three decades to observe what appears to be evidence of a hydrogen wall at the edge of the heliosphere.

New observations of the hottest known planet have revealed temperatures similar to those typically seen at the surface of a star, as well as an atmosphere of vaporised iron and titanium. The findings add to the diverse and, in some cases, extreme conditions seen on planets far beyond our own solar system. Kevin Heng, a professor at the University of Bern, and co-author of the latest work, said: “The temperatures are so insane that even though it is a planet it has the atmosphere of a star.”

A Nasa spacecraft is rocketing towards the sun on a quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before. The Parker solar probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, which was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within 3.8m miles (6.1m km) of the sun’s surface, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, allowing scientists to explore the sun in a way never before possible.

Sending stuff to space is always fun, but deciding what to launch is tricky — if you have the choice. For Ronnie Doyle, his decision was a copy of Earthbound, the 1994 SNES game which has become a cult favourite in the years gone by.

Such an instrument could allow researchers to look for extraterrestrial microbial life directly.

Forty years ago, scientists theorized a new kind of low-mass particle that could solve one of the enduring mysteries of nature: what dark matter is made of. Now a new chapter in the search for that particle has begun. This week, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) unveiled a new result, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, that places it in a category of one: it is the world’s first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity...

US space agency Nasa has delayed its a mission to send a satellite closer to the Sun than any before. The Parker Solar Probe was set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday, but last-minute investigations have delayed it for 24 hours. It is now scheduled to blast off - on board the mammoth Delta-IV Heavy rocket - on Sunday morning.

After nearly 20 years, the record of the most distant radio galaxy ever discovered has been broken. A team led by Ph.D. student Aayush Saxena (Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands) has found a radio galaxy from a time when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age, at a distance of 12 billion light-years.

The Earth, in all its majesty and its tragedy, is the subject of images taken aboard the International Space Station. This image of the Carr and Ferguson fires was captured by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex), on August 3, 2018, from the station. "California burning. These fires are frightening to watch, even from space. Here's a shout-out from space to all firefighters on this planet, my former colleagues. Stay safe my friends!" Gerst, a geophysicist and volcanologist, wrote on his Twitter account.

Bloomberg Businessweek asked eight designers to come up with logos for Trump's inane "Space Force." Milton Glaser nailed it. The image can be read as his next conquest or simply that there is very little inside that skull.

When a meteor screams through our upper atmosphere, it’s a silent show for us here on the ground. Most meteors burn up dozens of miles above the surface, and even if a sonic boom reaches us it comes minutes after the visual spectacle.

Ultra-hot Jupiters are a new class of exoplanets that astronomers are increasingly finding scattered throughout the cosmos. These incredibly hot gas giants sit much closer to their host stars than Mercury does to the Sun, which invariably leads to tidal locking — meaning the same side of the planet always faces the star. This causes dayside temperatures to exceed 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 Celsius), while nightside temperatures hover around 1,800 F (1,000 C). Furthermore, ultra-hot Jupiters display unique atmospheric characteristics that are not seen in other types of planets, such as an apparent lack of most molecules.

The ace pilot risking his life to fulfill Richard Branson’s billion-dollar quest to make commercial space travel a reality.

The best time to view the comet in the Northern Hemisphere will be Tuesday and Wednesday.

Canada’s shiny new radio telescope is up and running, and it just heard something very, very odd coming from deep space. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME for short) is located in British Columbia, and it spends its time listening intently for signals beaming through the vacuum of space. Most of the time, radio telescopes like this don’t hear anything out of the ordinary...

Observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein’s general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field near the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. This long-sought result represents the climax of a 26-year-long observation campaign using ESO’s telescopes in Chile.

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies the 4-million-solar-mass black hole named Sagittarius A*. This gravitational monster is surrounded by a group of stars orbiting around it at high speed. This extreme environment makes it the perfect place to explore gravitational physics, and particularly to test Einstein’s relativity theory.

Scientists discovered a new space-borne mineral in the Uakit meteorite from Russia. The new mineral is very hard but still not as hard as a diamond.

Mission success would open the door to the third flight of a Falcon 9 rocket.

Researchers believe they have found the first existing body of liquid water on the Red Planet.

National Geographic’s archive has maps of Mars dating back to when some scientists still thought there might be Martian-made canals on its surface. By Betsy Mason.

CFCs, the harmful ozone-depleting chemicals banned back in the 1980s, are experiencing a mysterious comeback

If you missed the glorious display from a blood red moon and radiant Mars during the weekend's early morning eclipse, there's another opportunity to get a good glimpse of the red planet tonight – Mars will be the closest to Earth it's been in the last 15 years. Unlike the eclipse, (which was more lengthy than usual but still a tough one to catch if you're usually in bed at 5.30am on a Saturday), this planetary performance can be enjoyed over the course of several hours tonight – and in the next few nights too.

Are we alone in the universe? What prerequisites are there for supporting life on another planet? Are there any other planets out there that fit the bill? We may now be closer to solving some of these puzzles thanks to a recent report published in “Science Advances”, in which a team of researchers have highlighted the conditions required for a similar phenomenon to take place on another planet.

While predictions of the future can never be absolutely certain, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which has revealed how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which predicts how life will evolve over time; and plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia.

This summer, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will launch to travel closer to the Sun, deeper into the solar atmosphere, than any mission before it. If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surface.

Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

Scientists have watched a star as it sped past a black hole, lighting up one of the mysteries at the heart of the universe. The unprecedented view of the dramatic behaviour was not just an exciting peek into the universe. It also confirms for the first time that Einstein's predictions about what happens to a star when it passes near a supermassive black hole are correct.

A full moon rises behind the Temple of Poseidon before a lunar eclipse in Cape Sounion, near Athens, Greece.

Russia has threatened to ban sales of a key rocket engine to the United States in response to new sanctions [supposedly] over the Skripal poisoning. By Alec Luhn.

The $20 million Lunar X Prize was supposed to send startups into space. The cost turned out to be far higher than the reward—but the competitors were never really in it for the trophy.

Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson says his Virgin Galactic spaceflight company is just about ready to launch.