Space Exploration News

September 15, 2025

Top Headlines

A Record-breaking Antenna Just Deployed in Space. Here’s What It Will See

Aug. 18, 2025 — NASA and ISRO s NISAR satellite has just reached a major milestone: the successful deployment of its enormous 39-foot antenna reflector in orbit. Folded up like an umbrella during launch, the reflector is now fully extended and ready to support ...

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Just Learned How to Multitask

Aug. 14, 2025 — Thirteen years after landing on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover is running smarter and more efficiently than ever. With new autonomy and multitasking capabilities, it’s maximizing the output from its long-lasting nuclear power source while ...

Trapped by Moon Dust: The Physics Error That Fooled NASA for Years

July 27, 2025 — Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison uncovered a critical flaw in how lunar and Martian rovers are tested on Earth. Simulations revealed that test results have been misleading for decades because researchers only adjusted rover weight to ...

UF Students Are Bending Metal with Lasers to Build Massive Structures in Orbit

July 2, 2025 — UF engineers, backed by DARPA and NASA, are perfecting laser-forming techniques that let metal sheets fold themselves into giant solar arrays, antennas, and even space-station parts right in ...

World’s Largest Camera Just Snapped the Universe in 3,200 Megapixels

June 27, 2025 — The LSST camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its jaw-dropping first images, each capturing 45 times the area of the full moon in one shot. Over the next ten years, this cosmic giant will scan the southern sky in ultra-HD, helping ...

Black Holes Could Act as Natural Supercolliders -- And Help Uncover Dark Matter

June 5, 2025 — Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would ...

Millions of New Solar System Objects to Be Found and 'Filmed in Technicolor' -- Studies Predict

June 3, 2025 — Astronomers have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects are likely to be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this ...

Particles Energized by Magnetic Reconnection in the Nascent Solar Wind

June 3, 2025 — Scientists have identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the ...

Scientists Discover New Evidence of Intermediate-mass Black Holes

May 30, 2025 — A series of studies sheds light on the origins and characteristics of intermediate-mass black ...

Cosmic Mystery Deepens as Astronomers Find Object Flashing in Both Radio Waves and X-rays

May 28, 2025 — A team of international astronomers have discovered a new cosmic object emitting both radio waves and ...

'Raindrops in the Sun's Corona': New Adaptive Optics Shows Stunning Details of Our Star's Atmosphere

May 27, 2025 — Scientists have produced the finest images of the Sun's corona to date. To make these high-resolution images and movies, the team developed a new 'coronal adaptive optics' system that removes blur ...

Why Are Some Rocks on the Moon Highly Magnetic?

May 23, 2025 — Scientists may have solved the mystery of why the moon shows ancient signs of magnetism although it has no magnetic field today. An impact, such as from a large asteroid, could have generated a cloud of ionized particles that briefly enveloped the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:51am EDT

Strange Steam Worlds Could Rewrite the Search for Life

Sep. 15, 2025 — Scientists are unraveling the mysteries of "steam worlds"—exoplanets known as sub-Neptunes that are rich in water but orbit so close to their stars that their surfaces are shrouded in thick ...

NASA's Perseverance Rover Finds Clues to Ancient Mars Chemistry and Possible Life

Sep. 12, 2025 — Mars’ Jezero Crater holds signs of ancient water and strange mineral reactions, some linked with organic compounds. With Perseverance’s samples ...

Black Holes Just Proved Stephen Hawking Right With the Clearest Signal Yet

Sep. 12, 2025 — Gravitational-wave astronomy has exploded since 2015, capturing hundreds of black hole and neutron star collisions. With ever-clearer signals, researchers are testing Einstein’s relativity and ...

A Doomed Star System Could Soon Shine as Bright as the Moon

Sep. 11, 2025 — Astronomers have uncovered the violent secret of V Sagittae, a white dwarf star consuming its companion in a spectacular feeding frenzy. This cosmic dance not only makes the system burn with unusual ...

This Rare White Dwarf Looks Normal, Until Hubble Shows Its Explosive Secret

Sep. 10, 2025 — Hubble has uncovered a rare ultra-massive white dwarf created in a violent star merger. Once thought to be ordinary, the star’s ultraviolet signature revealed its explosive history and hinted that ...

NASA’s Celestial “Accident” Unlocks Secrets of Jupiter and Saturn

Sep. 10, 2025 — Astronomers studying an oddball brown dwarf called “The Accident” have finally spotted silane, a long-predicted silicon molecule missing from Jupiter and Saturn’s skies. Its ancient, ...

Life on Mars? NASA Discovers Potential Biosignatures in Martian Mudstones

Sep. 10, 2025 — NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered mudstones in Mars’ Jezero Crater that contain organic carbon and unusual textures hinting at possible biosignatures. These findings suggest that ancient ...

Enceladus’s Plumes May Be Fooling Us About Life

Sep. 9, 2025 — Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has long fascinated scientists with its spectacular water plumes, which NASA’s Cassini spacecraft once revealed to contain organic molecules. Many hoped these ...

Planet Birth Photographed for the First Time

Sep. 9, 2025 — Astronomers have directly spotted a rare young planet, WISPIT 2b, still forming within the gap of a dusty ringed disk around a star like our sun—something long theorized but never observed until ...

MIT Scientists Uncover Shocking Origin of the Moon’s Magnetic Scars

Sep. 6, 2025 — For decades, scientists have puzzled over why lunar rocks show signs of strong magnetism when the moon itself has no global magnetic field today. New simulations suggest the answer may lie in a ...

The Sun’s Hidden Particle Engines Finally Exposed

Sep. 3, 2025 — Solar Orbiter has identified the Sun’s dual “engines” for superfast electrons: explosive flares and sweeping coronal mass ejections. By catching over 300 events close to their origin, the ...

A Weirdly Shaped Telescope Could Finally Find Earth 2. 0

Sep. 3, 2025 — Spotting Earth-like planets is nearly impossible with conventional telescopes, but researchers propose a bold fix: a rectangular design that can separate a planet’s faint glow from its blinding ...

NASA’s X-Ray Telescope Finds Bizarre Features in a Cosmic Hand

Aug. 31, 2025 — Astronomers have taken a fresh look at the famous “Hand of God” pulsar, combining X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra Observatory with new radio observations from the Australia Telescope Compact ...

Scientists Uncover Hidden Shards of Mars’ Violent Birth, Frozen for Billions of Years

Aug. 31, 2025 — Mars isn’t the neatly layered world we once imagined — its mantle is filled with ancient, jagged fragments left over from colossal impacts billions of years ago. Seismic data from NASA’s ...

Astronomers Capture Breathtaking First Look at a Planet Being Born

Aug. 27, 2025 — WISPIT 2b, a gas giant forming around a young Sun-like star, has been directly imaged for the first time inside a spectacular multi-ringed disk. Still glowing and actively accreting gas, the planet ...

Scientists Finally Pinpoint Jupiter’s Birth Using “molten Rock Raindrops”

Aug. 26, 2025 — Billions of years ago, Jupiter’s violent growth transformed the young solar system, smashing icy and rocky bodies together at incredible speeds. These cataclysmic collisions created tiny molten ...

Strange Ripples Frozen in Mars’ Sands Could Hold Keys to Human Survival

Aug. 24, 2025 — Perseverance is exploring Mars’ sandy ripples, strange frozen waves that could reveal how wind still shapes the planet. Along the way it uncovered unusual helmet-shaped rocks, sparking new ...

Are We Accidentally Broadcasting Our Location to Alien Civilizations?

Aug. 23, 2025 — Earth may already be broadcasting its presence to alien civilizations without realizing it. A new study shows that our deep-space transmissions, especially those aimed at Mars and interplanetary ...

Astronomers Track Record-Breaking Radio Flash Across 130 Million Light-Years

Aug. 30, 2025 — A team of astronomers spotted RBFLOAT, one of the brightest fast radio bursts ever seen, and traced it to a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Using CHIME’s new Outrigger array, researchers ...

Closest and Brightest Fast Radio Burst Ever Detected by Astronomers

Aug. 24, 2025 — Astronomers have detected the closest and brightest fast radio burst ever recorded, a dazzling signal from a galaxy just 130 million light-years away. The extraordinary flash, nicknamed RBFLOAT, ...

Jupiter’s Core Isn’t What We Thought

Aug. 24, 2025 — For years, scientists thought Jupiter’s strange interior was the result of a massive collision in its youth. But new research suggests that the planet’s diffuse, “fuzzy” core wasn’t born ...

These Asteroids Share a Strange Fingerprint from Billions of Years Ago

Aug. 23, 2025 — Scientists studying asteroids found that two seemingly unrelated types share a strange dusty coating of troilite. By using polarization of light instead of traditional spectra, they uncovered ...

Astronomers Uncover Enormous Bubble Bigger Than Our Solar System

Aug. 21, 2025 — A giant bubble of gas and dust surrounds the red supergiant DFK 52, likely created in a powerful outburst 4,000 years ago. Astronomers are baffled at how the star survived without going supernova, ...

Voyager Missed It, but James Webb Just Found Uranus’ Hidden Moon

Aug. 21, 2025 — Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered a tiny new moon orbiting Uranus, increasing the planet’s moon tally to 29. The object, only about six miles wide, escaped Voyager ...

Ancient Solar System Crash May Explain Bennu and Ryugu’s Origin

Aug. 21, 2025 — Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute have found strong evidence that near-Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu share a common origin with Polana, a much larger asteroid in the main belt. By ...

After 70 Years, the Sun’s Explosive Mystery Is Finally Solved

Aug. 20, 2025 — NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has directly observed magnetic reconnection in the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time, confirming decades-old theories about solar explosions. This discovery bridges ...

The Disappearing Planet Next Door Has Astronomers Intrigued

Aug. 14, 2025 — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected strong evidence for a giant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, the nearest Sun-like star to Earth. Located just 4 light-years away, this possible ...

Strange Spotted Rock on Mars Could Reveal Signs of Ancient Life

Aug. 15, 2025 — A curious red Martian rock nicknamed Sapphire Canyon has scientists excited, as its spotted appearance hints at possible organic origins. On Earth, researchers tested a powerful laser technique, ...

How NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Was Lost Before Reaching the Moon

Aug. 11, 2025 — NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a mission designed to create high-resolution maps of water on the Moon, ended after losing contact with the spacecraft just one day after its February 26 launch. Despite ...

This Tiny Spacecraft Could Race to a Black Hole and Rewrite Physics

Aug. 10, 2025 — A visionary plan proposes sending a paperclip-sized spacecraft, powered by Earth-based lasers, to a nearby black hole within a century. Led by astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi, the mission would test the ...