Space Probes News

January 19, 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 ...

Scientists Are Turning Earth Into a Giant Detector for Hidden Forces Shaping Our Universe

Dec. 6, 2025 SQUIRE aims to detect exotic spin-dependent interactions using quantum sensors deployed in space, where speed and environmental conditions vastly improve sensitivity. Orbiting sensors tap into ...

Space Is Filling with Junk and Scientists Have a Fix

Dec. 3, 2025 Earth’s orbit is getting crowded with broken satellites and leftover rocket parts. Researchers say the solution is to build spacecraft that can be repaired, reused, or recycled instead of abandoned. They also want new tools to collect old debris ...

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 ...

ESA’s Chilling New “Super Antenna” in Australia Reaches Spacecraft Billions of Miles Away

Oct. 6, 2025 ESA has inaugurated a powerful new 35-meter deep space antenna at its New Norcia site in Western Australia, marking a major boost to Europe’s ability to communicate with spacecraft exploring the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:06am EST

NASA Brings Crew-11 Home Early in Rare Medical Evacuation

Jan. 16, 2026 SpaceX Crew-11 splashed down safely in the Pacific after more than five months in orbit aboard the International Space Station. The four astronauts completed over 140 experiments and traveled nearly ...

Spacecraft Capture the Sun Building a Massive Superstorm

Jan. 13, 2026 Scientists have pulled back the curtain on one of the most extreme solar regions seen in decades, tracking it almost nonstop for three months as it unleashed powerful space weather. By combining ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Scientists May Have Found the Best Place for Humans to Land on Mars

Dec. 27, 2025 A newly identified region on Mars may hold the key to future human landings. Researchers found evidence of water ice less than a meter beneath the surface, close enough to be harvested for water, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Warm Ocean Beneath Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus May Be Perfect for Life

Nov. 9, 2025 NASA’s Cassini mission has revealed surprising heat flow at Enceladus’ north pole, showing the moon releases energy from both ends. This balance of heat could allow its subsurface ocean to remain ...

Extreme-Pressure Experiment Reveals a Strange New Ice Phase

Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers at KRISS observed water’s rapid freeze–melt cycles under ultrahigh pressure and discovered Ice XXI, the first new ice phase found in decades. Using advanced high-pressure tech and ...

Those Halloween Fireballs Might Be More Dangerous Than You Think

Oct. 31, 2025 The Taurid meteor shower, born from Comet Encke, delights skywatchers but may conceal hidden risks. Research led by Mark Boslough examines potential Taurid swarms that could increase impact danger in ...

Jupiter’s Wild Youth May Have Reshaped the Entire Solar System

Nov. 13, 2025 Simulations reveal that Jupiter’s rapid growth disrupted the early solar system, creating rings where new planetesimals formed much later than expected. These late-forming bodies match the ages and ...

Saturn's Moon Titan Just Broke One of Chemistry’s Oldest Rules

Oct. 17, 2025 Scientists from NASA and Chalmers University have discovered that incompatible substances can mix on Titan’s icy surface, breaking the “like dissolves like” rule of chemistry. Under ultra-cold ...

Who or What Dug Mars’ Mysterious Gullies? The Answer Is Explosive

Oct. 16, 2025 CO₂ ice blocks on Mars may dig gullies as they slide and sublimate in the thin atmosphere. In lab experiments, scientists recreated these eerie, worm-like movements under Martian conditions. The ...

Astronomers Shocked by Mysterious Gas Found in Deep Space

Nov. 9, 2025 Astronomers have discovered phosphine gas in the atmosphere of an ancient brown dwarf, Wolf 1130C, using the James Webb Space Telescope. The finding is puzzling because phosphine, a potential ...

Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus Just Revealed Stunning New Clues to Life

Oct. 2, 2025 Fresh analysis of Cassini data has revealed new complex organic molecules inside ice grains spewing from Enceladus. These discoveries strengthen the case that the moon’s underground ocean hosts ...

Supercomputers Decode the Strange Behavior of Enceladus’s Plumes

Nov. 18, 2025 Cutting-edge simulations show that Enceladus’ plumes are losing 20–40% less mass than earlier estimates suggested. The new models provide sharper insights into subsurface conditions that future ...

Supercomputer Breakthrough Exposes Enceladus’s Hidden Ocean

Nov. 10, 2025 From Cassini’s awe-inspiring flybys to cutting-edge simulations, scientists are decoding the secrets of Enceladus’s geysers. Supercomputer models show the icy moon’s plumes lose less mass than ...

The Moon’s Far Side Is Hiding a Chilling Secret

Oct. 3, 2025 New lunar samples from the far side reveal it formed from cooler magma than the near side, confirming the Moon’s interior is not uniform. Researchers suggest fewer heat-producing elements on the ...

Astronomers Stunned as Fiery Auroras Blaze on a Planet Without a Star

Sep. 29, 2025 The James Webb Telescope has revealed fierce auroras, storms, and unchanging sand-like clouds on the rogue planet SIMP-0136. These insights are pushing the boundaries of our understanding of alien ...

10 People Who Beat 8,000 Others to Become NASA Astronaut Candidates

Sep. 23, 2025 NASA has chosen 10 new astronaut candidates who will train for missions to the Moon and Mars. Their selection represents a powerful blend of talent and ambition, fueling humanity’s next great leaps ...