Saturn News

September 22, 2026

Top Headlines

NASA’s Moon Base Is Taking Shape with 20+ Lunar Landings Planned

Aug. 11, 2026 NASA is assembling the foundations of a future Moon Base through a wave of robotic missions and powerful new commercial landers. More than 20 landings are planned through 2029, testing everything from precision landings and lunar communications to ...

NASA Will Test SpaceX and Blue Origin Moon Landers Before the Next Lunar Landing

July 23, 2026 NASA is preparing for future astronaut landings on the Moon with an unusually ambitious orbital rehearsal. During Artemis III in 2027, Orion astronauts will rendezvous and dock separately with ...

China’s Chang’e-6 Reveals Why Solar Wind Hits the Moon’s Two Sides Differently

July 21, 2026 China’s Chang’e-6 samples have uncovered a surprising difference between the Moon’s two hemispheres. Solar wind particles penetrated deeper into the far-side soil because Earth’s ...

A Shattered Asteroid May Have Bombarded Earth 800 Million Years Ago

July 18, 2026 A catastrophic asteroid breakup may have triggered a huge wave of impacts across the inner solar system about 800 million years ago. The debris was launched from near a gravitational gateway controlled by Jupiter, sending fragments toward Earth, the ...

NASA Selects Four New Moon Missions to Build a Permanent Lunar Base

July 14, 2026 NASA is ramping up its lunar ambitions by awarding nearly $600 million for four commercial Moon landings planned for late 2028. Each mission will carry the same trio of science instruments to improve lunar navigation, study dangerous dust kicked up ...

Tiny X-ray Telescope Could Unlock the Moon's Hidden Chemistry

June 6, 2026 A lightweight new X-ray telescope could finally give scientists something they’ve never had before: a complete chemical map of the Moon. Researchers used detailed mission simulations to show that a compact telescope orbiting the Moon could ...

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 ...

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 ...

Saturn's Moon: Mysterious Wobbling Atmosphere Like a Gyroscope

May 22, 2025 The puzzling behavior of Titan's atmosphere has been revealed. The team has shown that the thick, hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon doesn't spin in line with its surface, but instead wobbles like a gyroscope, shifting with the ...

Innovative Approaches Advance Search for Ice on the Moon

Apr. 23, 2025 Scientists and space explorers have been on the hunt to determine where and how much ice is present on the Moon. Water ice would be an important resource at a future lunar base, as it could be used to support humans or be broken down to hydrogen and ...

Scientists Probe the Mystery of Titan's Missing Deltas

Apr. 18, 2025 New research finds that despite large rivers and seas of liquid methane, Saturn's moon Titan seems mostly devoid of river deltas, raising new questions about the surface dynamics on this alien ...

Solar Cells Made of Moon Dust Could Power Future Space Exploration

Apr. 3, 2025 The same dirt that clings to astronauts' boots may one day keep their lights on. Researchers created solar cells made out of simulated Moon dust. The cells convert sunlight into energy efficiently, withstand radiation damage, and mitigate the need ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:49am EDT

A Giant Crater May Reveal the Origin of Mars’ Doomed Moon

Sep. 19, 2026 A massive crater on Mars’ moon Phobos may hide a dense region of compressed material that could reveal whether the moon is a captured asteroid or debris from an ancient impact on Mars. Japan’s ...

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 ...

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 ...

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

Sep. 10, 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

One Asteroid Strike May Explain Two Mysteries of Mars’ Moon Deimos

Aug. 26, 2026 A single asteroid impact may explain two of Deimos’s most puzzling features: its huge southern depression and unusually smooth, dusty surface. Simulations suggest a roughly 320-meter asteroid ...

NASA Finds Earth Microbes Could Survive on the Moon

Aug. 25, 2026 NASA scientists found that microbes brought by astronauts could survive in cold, shadowed niches around the Moon’s South Pole, potentially complicating future searches for pristine lunar chemistry. ...

Neptune’s Tiny Moons May Be the Wreckage of Shattered Ancient Worlds

Aug. 14, 2026 JWST has uncovered surprising clues that Neptune’s strange inner moons may be the wreckage of an ancient cosmic catastrophe. Researchers detected clay-like minerals on Larissa, Galatea, and ...

Moonquakes Could Reveal Hidden Water Beneath the Lunar Surface

Aug. 3, 2026 Hidden moon ice may reveal itself through the way it bends and reflects vibrations from moonquakes. The technique could help astronauts locate vital water supplies and uncover clues about the origins ...

Future Astronauts Could Walk Across Rocks from Deep Inside the Moon

June 22, 2026 A colossal ancient collision may have left some of the Moon’s deepest secrets surprisingly close to future Artemis landing sites. By recreating the impact that formed the giant South Pole-Aitken ...

Why Jupiter Has Several Giant Moons but Saturn Has Only Titan

July 27, 2026 Young Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field may have created a safe zone where several large moons could survive. Saturn lacked this protection, possibly explaining why Titan stands almost alone among ...

Cassini Reveals a Surprising Twist in Saturn’s Magnetic Shield

Aug. 10, 2026 Cassini data has revealed a surprising twist in Saturn’s magnetic shield: the planet’s rapid rotation appears to drag a key opening in its magnetosphere far toward the afternoon side instead of ...

Saturn’s Magnetic Field Is Twisted and Scientists Just Figured out Why

Apr. 3, 2026 Saturn’s magnetic field isn’t the smooth, symmetrical shield scientists see around Earth. Instead, it’s noticeably skewed, and researchers now think they understand why. By analyzing years of ...

NASA Launches Artemis II for First Crewed Moon Flyby in 50 Years

Apr. 2, 2026 A new era of lunar exploration has begun as NASA launches four astronauts on Artemis II—the first crewed mission to fly around the Moon in over 50 years. Riding aboard the powerful SLS rocket, the ...

Astronomers Finally Solve Saturn’s Decades-Long Spin Mystery

May 29, 2026 A decades-old mystery about Saturn has finally been solved thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists discovered that Saturn’s changing “rotation rate” was never caused by the planet ...

Even JWST Can’t See Through This Planet’s Massive Haze

Mar. 18, 2026 Kepler-51d is a giant, ultra-light “super-puff” planet wrapped in an unusually thick haze that’s blocking scientists from seeing what it’s made of. Observations from JWST revealed that this ...

This Massive Crater Could Expose the Heart of a Lost Planet

Mar. 17, 2026 A mysterious metal-rich asteroid called Psyche has been baffling scientists for over two centuries, and its true origin remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in planetary science. Is it the ...

Chickpeas Could Become the First Food Grown on the Moon

Mar. 12, 2026 Scientists have grown chickpeas in simulated moon soil, offering a promising step toward farming on the lunar surface. Researchers mixed moon-like regolith with worm-produced compost and helpful ...

Apollo Rocks Reveal the Moon Had Brief Bursts of Super-Strong Magnetism

Feb. 26, 2026 Scientists at the University of Oxford have finally settled a decades-long mystery about the Moon’s magnetic field — and it turns out both sides were right. By reanalyzing Apollo mission rocks, ...

The Moon Is Still Shrinking and It Could Trigger More Moonquakes

Feb. 18, 2026 Researchers have uncovered more than a thousand previously unknown tectonic ridges across the Moon’s dark plains, showing the Moon is still contracting and reshaping itself. These features are ...

A Lost Moon May Have Created Titan and Saturn’s Rings

Feb. 27, 2026 Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so ...

The Ring Nebula Is Hiding a Giant Structure Made of Iron

Jan. 18, 2026 A huge bar of iron has been discovered lurking inside the iconic Ring Nebula. The structure is enormous, spanning hundreds of times the size of Pluto’s orbit and containing a Mars-sized amount of ...

Chang’e-6 Lunar Samples Reveal a Giant Impact Reshaped the Moon’s Interior

Feb. 8, 2026 A colossal ancient impact may have reshaped the Moon far more deeply than scientists once realized. By analyzing rare lunar rocks brought back by China’s Chang’e-6 mission from the Moon’s ...

Future Moon Landings Could Wipe out Clues to How Life Began on Earth

July 12, 2026 A new study suggests spacecraft exhaust could quickly contaminate the moon's most scientifically valuable regions, potentially masking ancient clues about how life began on Earth. Researchers ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hidden Oceans on Icy Moons May Be Boiling Beneath the Surface

Mar. 2, 2026 Icy moons circling the outer planets may be far more dynamic—and explosive—than they appear. New research suggests that when heat from tidal forces melts their ice shells from below, the sudden ...