Space Probes News

July 16, 2025

Top Headlines

Martian Dust to Dream Homes: How Microbes Can Build on the Red Planet

June 25, 2025 — Imagine printing your Martian home from dust, sunlight, and a bit of biology. A new synthetic lichen system uses fungi and bacteria to grow building materials directly from Martian soil, completely autonomously and without human ...

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 ...

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 ...

Missing Link in Early Martian Water Cycle Discovered

May 20, 2025 — Astronomers have filled a large gap in knowledge about Mars' water cycle. Their research on water percolating from surface to aquifer could change the picture of what early Mars was like, suggesting that less of the planet's water may have been ...

Streaked Slopes on Mars Probably Not Signs of Water Flow, Study Finds

May 19, 2025 — Researchers analyzed a global database of 500,000 strange streaks that occur on steep Martian slopes, concluding that they're most likely caused by dry processes rather than liquid ...

Ultraviolet Data from NASA's Europa Clipper Mission

May 16, 2025 — The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft has successfully completed its initial commissioning following the October 14, 2024, launch. Scheduled to arrive in the Jovian system in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit ...

A Snapshot of Relativistic Motion: Special Relativity Made Visible

May 5, 2025 — In 1959, physicists James Terrell and Roger Penrose (Nobel laureate in 2020) independently concluded that fast-moving objects should appear rotated. However, this effect has never been demonstrated. Now, scientists have succeeded for the first time ...

Volcanic History and Clues to Ancient Life on Mars

Apr. 25, 2025 — Researchers use the sophisticated technology on NASA's Perseverance rover to analyze volcanic rocks in Mars' Jezero Crater. Their findings show that some of the same volcanic processes that led to life on Earth happened long ago on Mars, a stunning ...

Astronomers Find Earth-Like Exoplanets Common Across the Cosmos

Apr. 25, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered that super-Earth exoplanets are more common across the universe than previously thought. While it can be relatively easy to locate worlds that orbit close to their star, planets with wider paths can be difficult to ...

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 ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:48pm EDT

It Looked Like Nothing—then Scientists Found a World 10x the Size of Jupiter

July 14, 2025 — Astronomers have uncovered a massive, hidden exoplanet nestled in the dusty disc of a young star—MP Mus—by combining cutting-edge data from the ...

2.35-Billion-Year-Old Moon Rock Found in Africa Rewrites Lunar History

July 13, 2025 — A 2.35-billion-year-old Moon rock that fell to Earth in Africa is rewriting what we know about lunar volcanism. This rare meteorite, studied by UK scientists and unveiled at a major geochemistry ...

NASA Probe Flies Into the Sun and Captures the Origins of Solar Storms

July 11, 2025 — In its closest-ever dive into the Sun’s atmosphere, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has returned stunning new images and data that bring scientists closer to solving one of the Sun’s biggest ...

NASA’s Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle Will Search for Lunar Ice and Subsurface Structures

July 11, 2025 — NASA is gearing up for an exciting chapter in lunar exploration by sending a trio of high-tech instruments to the Moon. Two of the devices will be ...

Scientists Uncover 15,000 Kilometers of Lost Rivers on Mars

July 11, 2025 — Mars may not have always been the dry and dusty world we imagine. A staggering network of ancient riverbeds, spanning over 15,000 kilometers, has been discovered in the planet’s Noachis Terra ...

Chang’e-6 Unearths Volcanic and Magnetic Mysteries on the Moon’s Farside

July 11, 2025 — China's Chang’e-6 mission has delivered the first-ever samples from the Moon’s far side, shedding light on one of planetary science’s greatest ...

Astronomers Catch Planets in the Act of Being Born

July 9, 2025 — Astronomers have spotted centimeter-sized “pebbles” swirling around two infant stars 450 light-years away, revealing the raw ingredients of planets already stretching to Neptune-like orbits. ...

Tiny Orange Beads Found by Apollo Astronauts Reveal Moon’s Explosive Past

June 16, 2025 — When Apollo astronauts stumbled across shimmering orange beads on the moon, they had no idea they were gazing at ancient relics of violent volcanic activity. These glass spheres, tiny yet ...

Magnetic Mayhem at the Sun’s Poles: First Images Reveal a Fiery Mystery

June 16, 2025 — For the first time in history, we re seeing the Sun from an angle no one ever has: from above and below its poles. Thanks to the European Space Agency s Solar Orbiter and its tilted orbit, scientists ...

Astronomers Just Found a Giant Planet That Shouldn’t Exist

June 11, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a ...

Sand Clouds and Moon Nurseries: Webb’s Dazzling Exoplanet Reveal

June 10, 2025 — Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have captured breathtakingly detailed images of two giant exoplanets orbiting a distant sun-like star. These observations revealed sand-like silicate ...

Sun Unleashes Monster Solar Storm: Rare G4 Alert Issued for Earth

June 10, 2025 — A violent solar eruption on May 31 launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurtling toward Earth, triggering a rare G4-level geomagnetic storm alert. Captured in real-time by U.S. Naval Research ...

What Lies Beneath: Using Rock Blasted from Craters to Probe the Martian Subsurface

May 14, 2025 — By analyzing how far material ejected from an impact crater flies, scientists can locate buried glaciers and other interesting subsurface ...

Did It Rain or Snow on Ancient Mars? New Study Suggests It Did

Apr. 21, 2025 — Geologists weigh in on a long-running debate about Mars: Billions of years ago, was the Red Planet warm and wet or cold 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 ...

Curiosity Rover Finds Large Carbon Deposits on Mars

Apr. 17, 2025 — Research from NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence of a carbon cycle on ancient ...

Ever Wonder Why Some Meteor Showers Are So Unpredictable?

Apr. 16, 2025 — Why do comets and their meteoroid streams weave in and out of Earth's orbit and their orbits disperse over time? Researchers show that this is not due to the random pull of the planets, but ...

Crystal Clues on Mars Point to Watery and Possibly Life-Supporting Past

Apr. 16, 2025 — A new study analyzing data from NASA's Perseverance rover has uncovered compelling evidence of multiple mineral-forming events just beneath the Martian surface -- findings that bring scientists ...

On Jupiter, It's Mushballs All the Way Down

Apr. 15, 2025 — Observations of Jupiter show that ammonia is unevenly distributed in the upper atmosphere, against expectations of uniform mixing. Scientists found evidence for a complicated but apparently real ...

Molten Martian Core Could Explain Red Planet's Magnetic Quirks

Apr. 15, 2025 — First ever supercomputer simulations of Mars with a fully molten core could explain the Red Planet's unusual magnetic field. Billions of years ago, Mars had an active magnetic field. ...

'Hidden Galaxies': Key to Unlocking Some of Universe's Secrets

Apr. 9, 2025 — Astronomers have peered back in time to find what looks like a population of 'hidden' galaxies that could hold the key to unlocking some of the universe's secrets. If their existence ...

Scientists Source Solar Emissions With Largest-Ever Concentration of Rare Helium Isotope

Apr. 9, 2025 — The NASA/ESA Solar Orbiter recently recorded the highest-ever concentration of a rare helium isotope (3He) emitted from the Sun. A Southwest Research Institute-led team of scientists sought the ...

Solar Wave Squeezed Jupiter's Magnetic Shield to Unleash Heat

Apr. 3, 2025 — A solar wind event from 2017 that hit Jupiter and compressed its magnetosphere created a hot region spanning half Jupiter's ...

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 ...

Martian Dust Could Pose Health Risks to Future Astronauts

Mar. 31, 2025 — Inhaling dust particles from the Red Planet over long periods of time could put humans at risk of developing respiratory issues, thyroid disease and other health ...

Organic Molecules of Unprecedented Size Discovered on Mars

Mar. 24, 2025 — The longest organic molecules identified to date on Mars have recently been detected. These long carbon chains, containing up to 12 consecutive carbon atoms, could exhibit features similar to the ...

Oxygen for Mars

Mar. 24, 2025 — To mitigate global climate change, emissions of the primary culprit, carbon dioxide, must be drastically reduced. A newly developed process helps solve this problem: CO2 is directly split ...

Treasure Trove of Galaxies, Glimpses of Deep Fields

Mar. 19, 2025 — On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency's Euclid mission releases its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different ...

Meteorites: A Geologic Map of the Asteroid Belt

Mar. 18, 2025 — Where do meteorites of different type come from? In a review paper, astronomers trace the impact orbit of observed meteorite falls to several previously unidentified source regions in the asteroid ...

Combination of Cosmic Processes Shapes the Size and Location of Sub-Neptunes

Mar. 17, 2025 — A combination of cosmic processes shapes the formation of one of the most common types of planets outside of our solar system, according to a new ...