Solar System News

January 13, 2026

Top Headlines

Earth’s Toughest Microbes Could Help Humans Live on Mars

Jan. 6, 2026 Mars looks familiar from afar, but surviving there means creating a protective oasis in a hostile world. Instead of shipping construction materials from Earth, researchers are exploring how to use Martian soil as the raw ingredient. Two tough ...

What Are Asteroids Really Made of? New Analysis Brings Space Mining Closer to Reality

Dec. 25, 2025 Scientists are digging into the hidden makeup of carbon-rich asteroids to see whether they could one day fuel space exploration—or even be mined for valuable resources. By analyzing rare meteorites ...

Subaru Telescope Reveals a Hidden Giant Planet

Dec. 22, 2025 Astronomers have uncovered a massive hidden planet and a rare “failed star” by combining ultra-precise space data with some of the sharpest ground-based images ever taken. Using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaiʻi, the OASIS survey tracked subtle ...

Japanese Spacecraft Faces a Massive Challenge from a House-size Asteroid

Nov. 21, 2025 New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s ...

JWST Captures Stunning 3D View of a Planet’s Scorching Atmosphere

Nov. 2, 2025 A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the first 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet. The fiery WASP-18b, a massive “ultra-hot Jupiter,” revealed striking temperature contrasts, including regions so hot they destroy ...

The Universe’s First Radio Waves Could Reveal Dark Matter

Oct. 25, 2025 Researchers propose that hydrogen gas from the early Universe emitted detectable radio waves influenced by dark matter. Studying these signals, especially from the Moon’s radio-quiet environment, could reveal how dark matter clumped together ...

Harvard Astrophysicist Suggests Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be an Alien Probe

Oct. 15, 2025 3I/ATLAS, a mysterious interstellar object racing toward the Sun, is baffling scientists with its speed and origin. Some researchers suggest it could even be alien-made, drawing comparisons to probes ...

The Sun’s Hidden Poles Could Finally Reveal Its Greatest Secrets

Oct. 14, 2025 High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...

The Moon’s South Pole Hides a 4-billion-year-old Secret

Oct. 12, 2025 A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...

An Interstellar Visitor Lights Up the Red Planet’s Sky

Oct. 12, 2025 ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...

Scientists Stunned by Wild Martian Dust Devils Racing at Hurricane Speeds

Oct. 9, 2025 Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...

Hit the Wrong Spot and an Asteroid Returns on a Collision Course

Sep. 9, 2025 Scientists caution that asteroid deflection must be precise, as striking the wrong spot risks sending it through a gravitational keyhole that sets up a future collision with Earth. Using lessons from NASA’s DART mission, researchers are developing ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:04am EST

Astronomers Discover Stars Don’t Spread Life’s Ingredients the Way We Thought

Jan. 12, 2026 Scientists observing the red giant star R Doradus have found that starlight isn’t strong enough to drive its stellar winds, overturning a ...

3.7-Billion-Year-Old Rocks Reveal How Earth and the Moon Were Born

Jan. 10, 2026 Crystals hidden in Australia’s oldest rocks have revealed new clues about how Earth and the Moon formed. The study suggests Earth’s continents didn’t begin growing until hundreds of millions of ...

Betelgeuse Has a Hidden Companion and Hubble Just Caught Its Wake

Jan. 10, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered the long-hidden cause behind Betelgeuse’s strange behavior: a small companion star carving a visible wake through the giant’s vast atmosphere. Using nearly eight years ...

A New Study Casts Doubt on Life Beneath Europa’s Ice

Jan. 7, 2026 Europa’s buried ocean has made it one of the most exciting places to search for life beyond Earth. However, new calculations suggest its seafloor may be calm, cold, and largely inactive, with ...

What Looked Like a Planet Was Actually a Massive Space Collision

Jan. 7, 2026 Around the bright star Fomalhaut, astronomers spotted glowing clouds of debris left behind by colossal collisions between large space rocks. One of these clouds was even mistaken for a planet before ...

Earth Has Been Feeding the Moon for Billions of Years

Jan. 5, 2026 Tiny bits of Earth’s atmosphere have been drifting to the moon for billions of years, guided by Earth’s magnetic field. Rather than blocking particles, the magnetic field can funnel them along ...

Astronomers Measure the Mass of a Rogue Planet Drifting Through the Galaxy

Jan. 4, 2026 Scientists have discovered a rogue planet roaming the Milky Way after combining observations from Earth and a space telescope. This rare dual perspective allowed them to weigh the planet and pinpoint ...

A Planet Just Vanished. NASA’s Hubble Reveals a Violent Cosmic Secret

Jan. 1, 2026 Astronomers tracking a nearby star system thought they had spotted an exoplanet reflecting light from its star. Then it vanished. Even stranger, another bright object appeared nearby. After studying ...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Just Discovered One of the Weirdest Planets Ever

Jan. 1, 2026 A newly discovered exoplanet is rewriting the rules of what planets can be. Orbiting a city-sized neutron star, this Jupiter-mass world has a bizarre carbon-rich atmosphere filled with soot clouds ...

New Images Reveal What Really Happens When Stars Explode

Dec. 31, 2025 New high-resolution images show that novae are anything but simple stellar fireworks. One exploded with multiple gas streams colliding almost immediately, while another shockingly delayed its ...

NASA Just Caught a Rare Glimpse of an Interstellar Comet

Dec. 20, 2025 An instrument aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft captured rare ultraviolet observations of an interstellar comet while Earth-based telescopes were blinded by the Sun. The spacecraft’s unique ...

What Scientists Found Inside Titan Was Not What Anyone Expected

Dec. 20, 2025 For years, scientists thought Saturn’s moon Titan hid a global ocean beneath its frozen surface. A new look at Cassini data now suggests something very different: a thick, slushy interior with ...

New Orbital Clue Reveals How Hot Jupiters Really Formed

Dec. 15, 2025 Hot Jupiters were once cosmic oddities, but unraveling how they moved so close to their stars has remained a stubborn mystery. Scientists have long debated whether these giants were violently flung ...

Webb Finds a Hidden Atmosphere on a Molten Super-Earth

Dec. 14, 2025 Webb’s latest observations reveal a hellish world cloaked in an unexpected atmosphere: TOI-561 b, an ultra-hot rocky planet racing around its star in under 11 hours. Despite being blasted by ...

Uranus and Neptune Are Hiding Something Big Beneath the Blue

Dec. 10, 2025 Uranus and Neptune may not be the icy worlds we’ve long imagined. A new Swiss-led study uses innovative hybrid modeling to reveal that these planets could just as easily be dominated by rock as by ...

A Nearby Earth-Size Planet Just Got Much More Mysterious

Dec. 12, 2025 TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early ...

This Simulation Reveals What Really Happens Near Black Holes

Dec. 22, 2025 Black holes are among the most extreme objects in the universe, and now scientists can model them more accurately than ever before. By combining Einstein’s gravity with realistic behavior of light ...

SPHERE’s Stunning Space Images Reveal Where New Planets Are Forming

Dec. 6, 2025 SPHERE’s detailed images of dusty rings around young stars offer a rare glimpse into the hidden machinery of planet formation. These bright arcs and faint clouds reveal where tiny planet-building ...

The Solar Mission That Survived Disaster and Found 5,000 Comets

Dec. 3, 2025 For thirty years, SOHO has watched the Sun from a stable perch in space, revealing the inner workings of our star and surviving crises that nearly ended the mission. Its long-term observations ...

Time Runs Faster on Mars and Scientists Just Proved It

Dec. 30, 2025 Thanks to Einstein’s relativity, time flows differently on Mars than on Earth. NIST scientists have now nailed down the difference, showing that Mars clocks tick slightly faster—and fluctuate ...

Scientists Just Found the Best Places to Look for Ancient Life on Mars

Dec. 31, 2025 Mars once had sprawling river systems that rivaled major watersheds on Earth, and scientists have now identified the biggest ones for the first time. Researchers mapped 16 massive drainage basins ...

A Hidden Star Found Where Dust Shouldn’t Exist

Dec. 17, 2025 A mysterious cloud of ultra-hot dust around Kappa Tucanae A may finally have an explanation: a hidden companion star. The star’s extreme orbit carries it straight through the dust zone, strongly ...

James Webb Catches a Giant Helium Cloud Pouring Off a Puffy Planet

Dec. 10, 2025 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have captured dramatic helium streams pouring off the super-puff exoplanet WASP-107b, revealing a world with an enormously inflated, weakly bound ...

Mars Dust Storms Are Crackling With Electricity

Dec. 29, 2025 Mars isn’t just dusty—it crackles with electricity. Scientists discovered that dust devils can generate tiny electric sparks, captured for the first time by Perseverance’s microphone. These ...

A Strange Star Near a Black Hole Is Defying Expectations

Dec. 26, 2025 Astronomers have decoded the hidden past of a distant red giant star by listening to tiny vibrations in its light, revealing clues of a dramatic cosmic history. The star, which quietly orbits a ...

Scientists May Have Found the Planet That Made the Moon

Nov. 23, 2025 About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...

Massive Hidden Structures Deep Inside Earth May Explain How Life Began

Nov. 20, 2025 Scientists may finally be closing in on the origins of two colossal, mysterious structures buried nearly 1,800 miles inside Earth—hidden formations that have puzzled researchers for decades. New ...

New Mars Images Reveal Hidden Traces of a Recent Ice Age

Nov. 26, 2025 Mars’s Coloe Fossae reveals a landscape shaped by ancient ice ages, with deep valleys, cratered terrain, and frozen debris flows preserved from a time when the planet’s climate dramatically ...

Astronomers Unveil the Surprising Hidden Geometry of a Supernova

Nov. 16, 2025 Astronomers have, for the first time, recorded the moment a star’s explosion broke through its surface. The nearby supernova, SN 2024ggi, revealed a surprisingly olive-shaped blast when studied ...

Astronomers Discover Thousands of Hidden Siblings of the “Seven Sisters”

Nov. 16, 2025 The “Seven Sisters” have far more relatives than anyone imagined. Using NASA and ESA space telescopes, astronomers found thousands of hidden stars linked to the Pleiades, forming a colossal ...