A “super-Earth” has been discovered orbiting the closest single star to our Sun, scientists said Wednesday in a breakthrough that could shine a light on Earth’s nearest planetary neighbours. Astronomers studied Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf just six light years away — practically in our back garden, galactically speaking — and noticed the presence of a “frozen, dimly lit world” at least 3.2 times heavier than Earth.

Sure, everyone wants to see Planet Earth in the rear-view mirror. But we won’t achieve that goal until we first cover these particular bases.

The next two Chinese missions to the moon will visit places no spacecraft has been before. The rest of the world wants a piece of the lunar action. By Lisa Grossman.

Put on your friendliest face and say hello to the newest member of our planetary neighborhood: Barnard’s star b. An international team led by researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science announced today that they’ve detected an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to Earth at just six light-years away. The astronomers calculate the newfound world, dubbed Barnard’s star b, to be about 3.2 times the mass of Earth and to orbit its host star once every 233 days.

The Gaia satellite has spotted an enormous 'ghost' galaxy lurking on the outskirts of the Milky Way. An international team of astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, discovered the massive object when trawling through data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. The object, named Antlia 2 (or Ant 2), has avoided detection until now thanks to its extremely low density as well as a perfectly-chosen hiding place, behind the shroud of the Milky Way's disc. The researchers have published their results online today.

There’s a “dark matter hurricane” blowing through our corner of the Milky Way galaxy. Right this second, it’s passing over Earth. And this fast-moving stream could reveal major details about dark matter, a new study finds.

"Rapid and reliable access to space is now a reality for small satellites."

Students at Exeter University have successfully demonstrated that genetically engineered bacteria could help to create breathable air on Mars when combined with perchlorate salts. Students from Exeter University have suggested that genetically engineered bacteria has the possibility to completely transform Mars and create a habitable planet that has breathable air after new research conducted in a lab showed that salts that can be retrieved from Martian soil could help to fuel this process.

On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby. Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.

Harvard researchers raise the possibility that it may be "a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

NASA programs -- especially Orion, which is focused on putting humans back on the moon -- could be in trouble after U.S. Rep. John Culberson lost his House seat Tuesday night to Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. Culberson, a Republican from Texas, has led the House appropriations committee that funds NASA for the last four years. And he's been a stanch advocate of science and human spaceflight over his nearly two decades in office, said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news.

The first satellite launched into orbit, Sputnik, launched from a spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Central Asian country was then a Soviet republic. Later, the first human to fly into space, Yuri Gagarin, also launched from Kazakhstan. Today, despite its independence, this spaceport remains the primary launch site for the Russian space program. However, when Kazakhstan wanted to get a small scientific satellite named KazSaySat and a technology satellite called KazistiSat into space...

A British satellite successfully deploys a net in orbit to demonstrate how to capture space debris.

China unveiled on Tuesday a replica of its first permanently crewed space station, which would replace the international community's orbiting laboratory and symbolises the country's major ambitions beyond Earth. The 17-metre (55-foot) core module was a star attraction at the biennial Airshow China in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, the country's main aerospace industry exhibition. Outside, China's J-10 fighter jet and J-20 stealth fighter wowed spectators as they zoomed across Zhuhai's sky. Back inside, the country displayed its fleet of drones and other military hardware.

One of the oldest stars in the universe is quietly hiding out in the Milky Way some 2,000 light-years from Earth. According to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, the tiny, 13.5-billion-year-old red dwarf contains barely any heavy elements at all, suggesting it formed out of a nearly pristine cloud of material leftover from shortly after the Big Bang. Furthermore, because the small star is just one-seventh the mass of the Sun and is made of primordial matter, it’s making astronomers reconsider the demographics of the very first stars.

The Altai mountain region of Central Asia is a rugged and remote place. Right in the center of the continental landmass, it forms a crossroads between the Kazakh steppes, the snow forests of Siberia and the arid plains of Mongolia. It’s a landscape of granite, forced up by the inch-a-year collision of the Indian tectonic plate with Asia, then carved out over millions of years by streams of snowmelt. Siberian Ibex wander here, along with musk deer feeding on the lichenous rocks and brown bears that follow the retreating snow fields in spring.

The breathtaking scene in Shropshire - recorded very few times on camera - was caught by Nick Jackson during an Orionid meteor shower on Saturday, October 20. (SWNS)

A scientific paper led by two researchers at Harvard University made a splash this week by claiming that a cigar-shaped rock zooming through our solar system may have been sent by aliens. The researchers noted in a pre-print of the article that it was an "exotic scenario," but that "Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

A new analysis of Martian meteorites indicates that the organic carbon on Mars may have come from naturally-occurring “batteries.”

The identification of three white dwarf stars zooming at hyper-fast velocities might provide evidence to support an alternative theory explaining the formation of Type 1a supernovae, researchers say. Type 1a supernovae, orthodoxy holds, arise when two white dwarf stars locked in a binary orbit merge with each other, kick-starting a runaway nuclear fusion reaction and consequent massive explosion.

A mysterious cigar-shaped object spotted tumbling through our solar system last year may have been an alien spacecraft sent to investigate Earth, astronomers from Harvard University have suggested. The object, nicknamed 'Oumuamua, meaning "a messenger that reaches out from the distant past" in Hawaiian, was first discovered in October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.

After four years aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has confirmed it’s mission complete for phase I and II of the Made In Space operated “3D Printing in Zero G Technology Demonstration.” The findings of this mission, accepted October 2018, were used in development of the Made In Space Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) which has been operating aboard the ISS since 2015. With this facility, and the early stage data...

Elon Musk captured the world's attention by launching rockets from Cape Canaveral and California air bases. But all along, his company has been trying to realize its own home base by the Mexican border.

On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka, "Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched earlier this year, has set a new record for becoming the closest human-made object to the Sun, the US space agency announced Monday.

'Halloween Asteroid' shaped like a skull is late for the party this year, flying past Earth on 11 November.

A first of its kind study uses angular momentum of satellite galaxies to weigh the Milky Way, providing a testing ground for the widely theorized cold dark matter theory.

A new book brings together breathtaking photos taken by Apollo astronauts, many of which were previously unpublished.

Scientists know a lot about Mars, at least when it comes to what it looks like. Sound, on the other hand, is a lot more challenging, and it’s not like we have high-powered microphones listening to the wind sweep across the Martian plains. Now, researchers from Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Exeter have created an interesting piece of music that wasn’t just inspired by Mars, but was actually composed by a computer algorithm using a Mars sunrise as data.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, Oct. 26, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 2:10 AM EDT.

A reminder: getting to space is hard

All the thrills and spills of the latest mission to the Red Planet are now downloadable. Brian W. Pulling reports.

Astronomers are building instruments that can characterize the many alien worlds the Kepler spacecraft revealed—and look for signs of life.

Clumps of gas have been seen swirling around the mysterious region, ten billion times bigger than the Sun

As a product designer imagines a Martian boot made out of human sweat and fungus, her quest sparks a new question: can biomaterials open the door for a human colony on Mars?