China’s miniature biosphere experiment has yielded sprouting cotton seeds, and they are the first plants to germinate on the Moon—an important first step in creating a viable, self-sustaining lunar colony. China’s Chang’e 4 lander arrived on the Moon’s far side on January 3, 2018. Among its cargo is a miniature lunar biosphere developed by scientists at Chongqing University. This experiment consists of a 7-inch-long, airtight container filled with soil, air, water, various seeds, yeast, and fruit fly eggs.

The head of Harvard University's Astronomy Department is doubling down on his claim from November 2018 that the space rock Oumuamua, the first interstellar object to enter our solar system, which it did in 2017, was an alien probe. Dr. Avi Loeb was interviewed by Haaretz about his controversial claim, which was made in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-author and Harvard astrophysicist Shmuel Bialy had stated, “Currently there is an unexplained phenomena, namely, the excess acceleration of Oumuamua...

The seeds, inside a sealed container, are the first plants ever grown on the Moon's surface.

Astronomers have revealed details of mysterious signals emanating from a distant galaxy, picked up by a telescope in Canada. The precise nature and origin of the blasts of radio waves is unknown. Among the 13 fast radio bursts, known as FRBs, was a very unusual repeating signal, coming from the same source about 1.5 billion light years away.

Astronomers may have discovered a new way that stars can die. A mysteriously brief and bright burst whimsically called the “Cow” reveals an entirely new type of stellar death. The details of that stellar doom, however, remain hazy. Scientists are still debating whether the flare-up, spotted on June 16, 2018, was from an unusual type of star that was eaten by a black hole, or from an old, massive star exploding in a weird sort of supernova.

In the 2015 blockbuster The Martian, Matt Damon plays an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and survives by growing potatoes, producing enough food to last months. China’s lunar mission could bring that piece of science fiction a step closer to reality if it succeeds in growing the first flower on the moon in less than a hundred days’ time, an experiment that the China National Space Administration said it would soon broadcast.

Cheap, sun-reflecting satellites could kickstart space advertising — the satellite equivalent of planes towing banners. Astronomers say it's light pollution.

Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world's first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it's exploring.

NASA astronaut David Scott, the seventh person to walk on the Moon and, funnily enough, the first to drive around on it, is one of four people still left alive that can describe such an experience. Per BBC, he said that he’s often asked about what it was like. “I describe the majesty of the lunar mountains, the layers of volcanic lava or the beauty of the sparkling crystals in the rocks,” he wrote in his book, Two Sides of the Moon. “Only an artist or poet could convey the true beauty of space.”

The universe is far from homogenous. Rather, stars, and the galaxies that contain them, clump together in some places, brought together by their shared gravitational attraction. Astronomers have historically found clusters of galaxies in the sky to be relatively easy to spot, as they’re extremely large and bright. But one new study suggests that a third of all galaxy clusters have been hiding undiscovered out in the cosmos.

The U.S. government may be in partial shutdown mode, but operations to configure instruments critical to NASA’s InSight mission on Mars are right on schedule—and things are going swimmingly, as the latest mission update attests. Our last update from the InSight mission came on December 20 following the probe’s successful deployment of the SEIS instrument, or Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, onto the Martian surface. The configuration of this hexagonal-shaped device is still ongoing, but an update from the SEIS team shows things are proceeding as planned.

Late in 2018, the gravitational wave observatory, LIGO, announced that they had detected the most distant and massive source of ripples of spacetime ever monitored: Waves triggered by pairs of black holes colliding in deep space. Only since 2015 have we been able to observe these invisible astronomical bodies, which can be detected only by their gravitational attraction.

Given that the half-century-old technology embodied in Voyager 1 and 2 recently traversed the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium, it is likely that within the next century our civilization will exit the solar system boundary, marked by the Oort cloud, a thousand times farther away. Venturing into interstellar space will signal our transition from a sun-based residence to the grander neighborhood of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, citizen scientists have discovered a planet roughly twice the size of Earth located within its star's habitable zone, the range of orbital distances where liquid water may exist on the planet's surface. The new world, known as K2-288Bb, could be rocky or could be a gas-rich planet similar to Neptune. Its size is rare among exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system.

Hubble, the trusty space telescope that has been delivering gorgeous views of the cosmos for decades now, just delivered another gift. In a new composite image made up of many individual photos, Hubble shows us the nearby Triangulum galaxy in incredible detail. No, seriously, the final image is so huge that you’d never want to wait for it to load on a web page.

It shines with a brightness equivalent to 600 trillion suns. “We don’t expect to find many quasars brighter than that in the whole observable universe,” said the astronomers. Researchers announced this week (January 9, 2019) at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, that they’ve discovered the brightest quasar yet known, detected from the period when the universe was just beginning to make luminous objects, such as stars and galaxies.

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined. Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are the consequence of gravity crushing a dying star without limit, leading to the formation of a true singularity – which happens when an entire star gets compressed down to a single point yielding an object with infinite density.

The Hubble Space Telescope's mind-blowing new image of the Triangulum Galaxy is almost as gigantic as the galaxy itself. Triangulum, also called Messier 33, can be spotted by lucky skywatchers without an assist from a telescope, but it looks like a smudge. Hubble's vivid view combines 54 images into one image showing the central part of the galaxy and some of its spiral arms.

"Starship will look like liquid silver."

Astronomers have revealed details of mysterious signals emanating from a distant galaxy, picked up by a telescope in Canada. The precise nature and origin of the blasts of radio waves is unknown. Among the 13 fast radio bursts, known as FRBs, was a very unusual repeating signal, coming from the same source about 1.5 billion light years away.

Astronomers know our solar system better than any other, but they're still learning new ways in which it doesn't seem to be particularly normal. One such quirk, in patterns of planetary sizes, was the subject of a news conference held yesterday (Jan. 8) at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The results could prompt scientists to revise a leading theory of how planets form.

Scientists from Russia and around the world see plasma rocket technology as a crucial possible ingredient for speedy missions to Mars and beyond. Physicists from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk are preparing another round of experiments aimed at successfully harnessing the power of thermonuclear plasma for use in a rocket engine, institute deputy director Alexander Ivanov has told journalists.

Fresh greens in space? Recent research has looked into how plants respond to low levels of gravity and a particular hormone which can help plants grow in challenging space conditions. Now, new research has succeeded in growing plants in high-tech planters which use artificial soil made from lava rock.

A radio telescope in Canada has proved its mettle in finding many new examples of fast radio bursts (FRBs) — giving astronomers one of their best shots yet at unraveling the mystery of these cosmic flashes. “Look! We see FRBs,” Deborah Good, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, on 7 January.

In a first for the world, the Chinese National Space Agency successfully landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon Thursday, a state broadcaster reported. The probe, named Chang’e 4, launched in early December — the latest in a series of missions aimed at exploring the moon and paving the way for Chinese astronauts to eventually land on the lunar surface. The country plans to launch a sample return mission to the moon later this year.

Astronomers think they know how Uranus got flipped onto its side. According to Astronomers think they know how Uranus got flipped onto its side. According to detailed computer simulations, a body about twice the size of Earth slammed into Uranus between 3 to 4 billion years ago. The impact created an oddity in our Solar System: the only planet that rotates on its side. computer simulations, a body about twice the size of

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past the most distant object ever visited.

Perihelion, the closest point of earth to the sun 147,100,035 km happens shortly on 2019-Jan-03 at around 9.33 am GMT

No one has walked on the moon in almost 50 years, but NASA says the long dry spell will come to an end by 2028. And if things go according to plan, astronauts will do more than leave flags and footprints. Working with commercial partners and the space agencies of other nations, NASA is planning on building a moon-orbiting space station as well as a permanent lunar base.

A US tech start-up is slapped with a historic fine for launching unauthorised satellites, prompting warnings about runaway cowboy-like behaviour from private companies joining the space race.

Rocketry is the forte of Dr K. Sivan, Chairman, ISRO, but this expertise has evidently rubbed off on his style of functioning as he drives his colleagues to launch three Indians into space eight months ahead of the schedule of August 2022 announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has knit up many teams to accomplish this high profile mission, (Gaganyaan), and one of these teams, has been working till the early hours every day to complete a review of the design of the crew module and systems by January 15. Excerpts:

Astronomers attempting to capture the first images of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way have given early hints that the ambitious project has been successful. The observations, by the Event Horizon Telescope, are expected to be unveiled in the spring in one of the most eagerly awaited scientific announcements of 2019. Now, a senior scientist on the project has said “spectacular” data was gathered during observations of two black holes, including Sagittarius A* at the centre of our own galaxy.

The moment has arrived at last. A woman in a hospital gown steels herself, ready to push. A nearby monitor displays her baby’s heart rate in big, neon numbers. A nurse in crisp scrubs coos in her ear, offering words of encouragement, advice. The scene would resemble any other delivery room if it weren’t for the view outside the window: the soft curvature of the blue Earth against the blackness of space, 250 miles below.

If there’s one thing holding us back from exploring space, it’s fuel. It’s bulky. It’s heavy. And probes must carry their own supply. When that runs out, their lights go out. But what if every asteroid represented a potential pit-stop? The issue of powering craft through space won’t go away. Solar panels can provide all the electricity a space probe needs. But, if it wants to move, it must also have a propellant.

Out in the vast coldness of outer space, there are planets that travel alone through darkness without the boundaries of a system. Here’s how this can happen – and why these frozen deserts might secretly harbor alien life.