Space & Time News

September 29, 2026

Top Headlines

This Suitcase-sized Spacecraft Could Hear the Universe Before Stars Existed

Sep. 28, 2026 CosmoCube will use the far side of the Moon as a shield from Earth’s radio noise to search for a faint signal from the universe before the first stars existed. The suitcase-sized satellite could reveal how the cosmic dark ages ended and how dark ...

Blood Tests Reveal Why Astronauts Get Constipated in Space

Sep. 28, 2026 Spaceflight may dramatically change the gut within weeks, causing bacteria to break down more protein as food moves more slowly through the intestines. The shift could help explain astronaut constipation and may have wider effects on health, making ...

The Secret to Growing Food on Mars Could Be Fungi

Sep. 25, 2026 Scientists think beneficial fungi could help transform nutrient-poor lunar and Martian regolith into a material capable of supporting crops. By helping plants access nutrients and withstand harsh conditions, these microbes could someday make ...

A Strange Circle on Satellite Maps Turned Out to Be a 390-million-year-old Impact Crater

Sep. 22, 2026 An amateur astronomer searching satellite maps for a Quebec camping spot accidentally discovered a massive ancient impact crater. Scientists later found shatter cones that confirmed the ...

NASA Just Powered Up Roman’s Massive 300-megapixel Camera

Sep. 21, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has successfully activated its 300-megapixel infrared camera, which will capture enormous stretches of the cosmos with Hubble-like sharpness. Its planet-hunting coronagraph is also working as expected, putting Roman ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Could Last More Than Twice as Long as Planned

Sep. 18, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope may now have enough fuel for at least 22 years of science, more than double its original 10 year design life. An extremely precise course correction, extra fuel at ...

A $100 Detector Can See Invisible Particles Raining Down from Space

Sep. 17, 2026 A pocket-sized, roughly $100 detector can reveal the invisible stream of cosmic particles constantly passing through Earth and even through our bodies. What began as a student physics project is now being used in major experiments, balloon missions, ...

NASA-backed Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Edible Cookies

Sep. 13, 2026 Scientists have engineered yeast to turn PET plastic and agricultural waste into ingredients for protein-rich, 3D-printed cookies called µBites. Developed partly for NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, the system can produce proteins, fats, ...

Interstellar Solar Sails Hit a Strange Problem at 75% of Light Speed

Sep. 2, 2026 Solar sails pushed by powerful lasers could reach incredible speeds, but relativity may eventually make the light itself work against them. At around 75% of the speed of light, scattered photons can begin creating drag, adding a surprising obstacle ...

NASA’s Swift Telescope Is Back, but Time Is Running Out

Sep. 1, 2026 NASA has brought two of Swift’s telescopes back online after technical problems derailed a commercial mission intended to rescue the aging observatory by raising its orbit. With atmospheric drag pulling the spacecraft downward faster than ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches to Reveal the Universe’s Darkest Secrets

Aug. 31, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will See 100 Times More Sky Than Hubble

Aug. 28, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover hidden planets, map billions of cosmic objects, and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 7:00am EDT

The Ice Blasting from Saturn's Moon Enceladus Is Stranger Than Scientists Realized

Sep. 29, 2026 Enceladus may naturally separate and concentrate chemicals from its hidden ocean as droplets slowly freeze and shatter on their way into space. The ...

NASA’s Crew-13 Could Go from Florida to the ISS in Under 9 Hours

Sep. 29, 2026 NASA and SpaceX could launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on October 1, with the Dragon spacecraft reaching orbiting outpost less than nine hours after liftoff. Crew-13 will ...

James Webb Reveals Why Planet Formation Is a Race Against Time

Sep. 28, 2026 JWST has revealed that young planetary systems lose their planet-building gas through a changing mix of powerful jets, molecular winds, and radiation-driven outflows. As the disks age and their gas ...

Is the Universe Infinite? The Answer Gets Weird Fast

Sep. 27, 2026 Measurements of ancient light from the cosmic microwave background suggest that the universe is remarkably flat. But that does not prove it is infinite, because the observable cosmos could be only a ...

Two Astronauts Who Flew Farther Than Anyone Before Are Taking New NASA Roles

Sep. 26, 2026 Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman are transitioning to emeritus status at NASA after their historic journey around the Moon ...

“We Found Something Never Seen Before” – A Dead Star Is Producing a Shock Wave That Shouldn’t Exist

Sep. 24, 2026 A dead white dwarf with no detectable disk has somehow produced a powerful shock wave that appears to have persisted for at least 1,000 years. Its ...

Ancient Meteorites Reveal a Powerful Force That Helped Build the Solar System

Sep. 24, 2026 Ancient grains inside one of the oldest known meteorites reveal that a surprisingly strong magnetic field existed during the solar system’s first ...

“We Just Need to Go Back” – Uranus’ Moon Ariel May Have Hidden a 100-Mile-Deep Ocean

Sep. 24, 2026 Ariel, one of Uranus’ moons, may once have contained a subsurface ocean more than 100 miles deep beneath its fractured icy shell. The finding, ...

These Massive Stars Could Explain Webb’s Strangest Galaxies

Sep. 24, 2026 Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low ...

First Stellar Stream Beyond the Milky Way Could Reveal Dark Matter

Sep. 23, 2026 Astronomers have discovered the first globular cluster stellar stream beyond the Milky Way, opening a new way to study dark matter in distant galaxies. These faint trails of stars trace a galaxy’s ...

The Solar System Chose Fire Over Ice from the Very Beginning

Sep. 22, 2026 Ancient iron meteorites reveal that some of the Solar System’s first solid bodies were built mostly from tiny heat-forged rock beads called chondrules, while water-rich dust was largely excluded. ...

The LHC Just Ruled out Another Hiding Place for Quantum Black Holes

Sep. 22, 2026 Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics ...

Black Holes of Every Size Follow the Same Surprising Rule

Sep. 21, 2026 Scientists have found evidence that black holes of vastly different sizes may launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. Supermassive black holes can produce jets soon after tearing ...

NASA’s Moon Orbiter Finds a 728-Foot Crater That Wasn’t There Before

Sep. 18, 2026 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed a 728-foot-wide crater that formed on the Moon in 2024, making it the largest newly formed crater ever identified in the solar system. The impact ...

Astronomers Just Found the Youngest Known Planet Ever

Sep. 17, 2026 Astronomers have confirmed a Jupiter-size planet less than a million years old, making Elias 2-24 b the youngest known planet and giving scientists a rare look at a world still being born. Its ...

JWST’s Mysterious Little Red Dots May Be Black Holes Growing at Incredible Speeds

Sep. 17, 2026 New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole ...

Scientists Are About to Test Einstein’s Gravity With Exotic Matter

Sep. 18, 2026 Scientists have found a new way to create a controlled beam of muonium, an exotic atom containing a heavier cousin of the electron. The advance could allow researchers to test for the first time ...

Venus May Have Swallowed Its Own Moon

Sep. 16, 2026 Venus may have once had a moon, but new research suggests the planet’s incredibly slow rotation could have doomed it. Computer simulations showed that instead of gradually drifting away like ...

James Webb Reveals Chariklo’s Mysterious Rings Are Changing Faster Than Expected

Sep. 15, 2026 The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprising changes in the rings around Chariklo, a small object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Over just a few years, its inner ring became more ...

The Moon May Have Formed Intact Just Hours After a Giant Collision

Sep. 9, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the Moon-forming collision may have depended heavily on how hot and physically strong early Earth and Theia were. New simulations found that some impacts create the ...

Scientists Observe Einstein’s Gravity in the Quantum World for the First Time

Sep. 8, 2026 Physicists have directly observed a long-predicted quantum effect of gravity, putting one of Einstein’s foundational ideas to a striking new test. Using ultracold atoms, researchers split an ...

NASA Scientists Discover a Giant 10-Sided Pattern on Saturn

Sep. 3, 2026 A huge 10-sided atmospheric pattern has appeared around Saturn’s south pole, giving the planet a surprising counterpart to its famous northern hexagon. Hubble data suggest the strange decagon only ...

Astronomers Detect Ancient Hydrogen Signal That Could Help Map the Universe

Sep. 8, 2026 Astronomers have detected an exceptionally faint hydrogen radio signal from billions of light-years away using South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope. Instead of finding galaxies one at a time, the ...

September Brings a Dazzling Venus and a Glowing Harvest Moon

Sep. 3, 2026 September’s sky features brilliant Venus, the Milky Way’s hazy center, and the seasonal turning point of the equinox. The month ends with a glowing Harvest Moon rising near Saturn and faint ...

The Universe Has Plenty of Hydrogen. So Why Is Star Formation Collapsing?

Sep. 3, 2026 Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for ...

NASA Delays Crew-13 Launch After Leak Found on SpaceX Dragon

Sep. 1, 2026 NASA and SpaceX have delayed Crew-13 after finding an oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system during prelaunch preparations. Engineers are investigating the problem before the ...

Mercury’s Surface Reveals a Surprisingly Fiery Past

Sep. 11, 2026 Scientists have discovered that Mercury’s surface contains far less silicon dioxide than previously thought, pointing to an unexpectedly hot volcanic past. The finding suggests ancient lava may ...

Venus’s Pale Yellow Clouds May Hide Something Surprisingly Dark

Sep. 12, 2026 A century-old mystery in Venus’s clouds just became more intriguing, as scientists calculated how strongly the unidentified material behind its dark ultraviolet patterns must absorb light. The ...

Scientists Discover a Massive Heat Anomaly Deep Inside Mars

Aug. 30, 2026 Mars has a hidden temperature divide, with its southern interior potentially hundreds of degrees hotter than the north and partially molten. The discovery could help explain several long-standing ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...