The exploration of celestial bodies and cosmic phenomena beyond Earth. This field seeks to uncover the mysteries of the universe, including the nature of stars, planets, galaxies, and the laws governing space and time.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is revealing dust unlike any known in the Solar System. Its extreme polarization pattern, a deep negative dip and delayed inversion, suggests dust grains with properties never seen before, pointing to an origin in very different planetary conditions.
Some stars don’t simply fade into quiet obscurity, they are hurled from their homes at unimaginable speeds, becoming hypervelocity white dwarfs. These burned-out stellar cores can race through the galaxy at more than 2 000 km/s (1 240 miles/s), fast enough to escape the Milky Way entirely. A new study shows how such runaways are forged in violent mergers, rewriting what we know about supernovae and the universe’s expansion.
NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found the strongest evidence of past life on Mars. In a new study, scientists report that samples from Jezero Crater contain compounds with potential organic origins, a discovery that could reshape our understanding of the Red Planet’s habitability.
Researchers at Tohoku University, Japan, have validated in laboratory experiments a cusp-type bidirectional plasma thruster designed for contactless removal of orbital debris. The design eliminates destabilizing reaction forces while achieving 25 mN of thrust at 5 kW, marking a step toward scalable active debris removal in increasingly congested Earth orbit.
The James Webb Space Telescope released a new image of the young star cluster Pismis 24 in the Lobster Nebula (NGC 6357), located about 5 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, on September 4. The near-infrared image reveals thousands of stars, including Pismis 24-1, a system of at least two massive stars with 74 and 66 solar masses, embedded in towering spires of dust and gas.
Chinese scientists presented a blueprint for near-Earth asteroid defense and resource utilization at the third International Deep Space Exploration Conference in Hefei, Anhui Province, on September 5, 2025.
Astronomers using JWST found a planet-forming disk unusually rich in carbon dioxide but poor in water, challenging models of how planetary systems develop.
Ions in solar flares reach temperatures exceeding 60 million °C (108 million °F), potentially solving a long-standing mystery over unexpectedly broad spectral lines first observed in the 1970s, according to new research published on September 3, 2025.
NASA’s InSight mission detected seismic waves consistent with a solid inner core in Mars, according to a study published in Nature on September 3, 2025. Researchers constrained its radius to 613 ± 67 km (380 ± 41 miles).
A new study shows that major geomagnetic and auroral disturbances can, in rare cases, originate from solar eruptions near the limb, with evidence pointing to the January 1938 Fátima storm as one such event.
