Space Probes News

July 20, 2026

Top Headlines

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 ...

Terraforming Mars May Be More Realistic Than Scientists Once Thought

July 17, 2026 Scientists say new technologies have reopened the debate over whether Mars could someday be terraformed, turning a once impossible idea into a serious research topic. Before anyone tries to reshape the Red Planet, though, researchers say we must ...

NASA Selects 41 Space Technologies for Future Moon and Mars Exploration

July 15, 2026 NASA has chosen 41 commercial technology projects that could solve critical challenges for future missions to the Moon and Mars. From powering lunar outposts to protecting spacecraft from Moon dust, the innovations are designed to push both space ...

NASA's Perseverance Just Completed a Marathon on Mars

July 14, 2026 NASA's Perseverance rover has reached an impressive new milestone on Mars, completing the equivalent of a full marathon by driving 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) across the Red Planet. It accomplished the feat in just five years and four months, ...

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 ...

Europe Just Unveiled a New Rival to SpaceX’s Starship

July 10, 2026 A detailed independent study found that SpaceX's Starship is every bit as revolutionary as expected, while revealing both its impressive capabilities and its biggest remaining hurdles. It also introduces an ambitious European rocket concept that ...

SpaceX Wants to Build AI Data Centers in Space. Will It Work?

June 18, 2026 The race to build data centers in space is gaining momentum as AI drives unprecedented demand for computing power. Orbital facilities could tap into abundant solar energy and avoid many of the environmental challenges faced on Earth. Yet space ...

MIT’s New Spacecraft Engine Could Send Tiny Satellites to Mars

June 10, 2026 MIT researchers have shown that one fuel can power both chemical and electric spacecraft thrusters, potentially transforming what small satellites can do. The approach combines quick bursts of speed with highly efficient long-range propulsion in a ...

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 ...

NASA Just Proved Spacecraft Can Switch Between Multiple Satellite Networks

June 6, 2026 NASA’s PExT terminal has shown that spacecraft can seamlessly communicate through multiple government and commercial networks, a major step beyond traditional single-network systems. The mission is now expanding to test new capabilities that could ...

NASA’s New AI Space Chip Could Let Spacecraft Think for Themselves

May 15, 2026 NASA is testing a next-generation space computer chip that could give spacecraft the ability to operate far more independently in deep space. The radiation-hardened processor is showing performance levels hundreds of times beyond current spaceflight ...

NASA’s Psyche Probe Is About to Slingshot Around Mars at 12,000 Mph

May 11, 2026 NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is about to pull off a dramatic close flyby of Mars, skimming just 2,800 miles above the planet to get a powerful gravitational boost on its journey to the mysterious metal-rich asteroid Psyche. The maneuver will save ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:49am EDT

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Reveals a Strange Atmosphere on a Hellish Lava Planet

July 15, 2026 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details about the blistering lava planet 55 Cancri e, where temperatures are high enough to melt ...

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 say ...

This Mars Rover Could Finally Reveal Whether Life Ever Existed on Mars

July 9, 2026 The hunt for ancient life on Mars just got an important test run. Scientists confirmed that the Rosalind Franklin rover's sophisticated instrument can detect subtle differences in two stable ...

Earth May Have Been Seeding Venus With Life for Billions of Years

June 25, 2026 A new study suggests Earth may have been sending tiny hitchhikers to Venus for billions of years. Researchers found that asteroid impacts could launch microbes into space, where some might survive ...

Einstein Probe May Have Caught a Black Hole Tearing Apart a White Dwarf for the First Time

June 25, 2026 Astronomers may have witnessed one of the rarest and most dramatic cosmic events ever seen: a long-sought intermediate-mass black hole ripping apart ...

NASA’s Lucy Finds a Wobbling Peanut-Shaped Asteroid With Signs of Ancient Water

June 25, 2026 NASA’s Lucy spacecraft discovered that asteroid Donaldjohanson is a wobbling, peanut-shaped relic born from a violent collision and slowly reshaped ...

Meteorite Reveals a Lost Moon-Sized World from the Dawn of the Solar System

June 23, 2026 A rare meteorite has revealed evidence of a massive lost world that once orbited the young Sun before being destroyed in a catastrophic collision. The discovery suggests some early planets formed ...

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 ...

Alien Planet Spins Revealed a Hidden Clue to How Worlds Form

June 13, 2026 Using the Keck Observatory, astronomers measured the spins of dozens of giant planets and brown dwarfs orbiting distant stars. They found that giant planets can spin faster than much more massive ...

NASA Reveals Artemis III Crew for One of the Most Complex Space Missions Ever

June 11, 2026 NASA has selected the Artemis III crew for a high-stakes 2027 mission designed to test the future of lunar exploration. Astronauts will launch aboard ...

Venus Will Disappear Behind the Moon in a Rare June Sky Event

June 3, 2026 June's night sky delivers several must-see events, starting with a close encounter between Venus and Jupiter after sunset. Mercury joins the pair to form a rare three-planet lineup, while the ...

A Stellar “Rosetta Stone” Reveals the Source of Mysterious Cosmic Signals

June 2, 2026 Astronomers have finally cracked the mystery behind a strange class of repeating cosmic signals that has baffled scientists for years. Using Australia’s ASKAP radio telescope, researchers traced ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Could Reveal 100,000 Hidden Worlds

June 1, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope could revolutionize the search for alien worlds by discovering around 100,000 exoplanets—far more than all previous missions combined. It will look deep into ...

Scientists Discover a Giant “planet Factory” Beyond Jupiter

May 26, 2026 Scientists believe a dust-filled ring just outside Jupiter acted like a cosmic “planetesimal factory,” producing multiple generations of early space rocks with very different compositions. The ...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Discovers a Planet Where Rock Clouds Vanish Every Night

May 27, 2026 A giant planet nearly 700 light-years away has a bizarre daily weather cycle where mineral clouds appear every morning and vanish by nightfall. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers ...

NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Captures Stunning Mars Images During High-Speed Flyby

May 23, 2026 NASA’s Psyche spacecraft skimmed past Mars in a precision flyby that helped catapult it deeper into space toward its ultimate target: the bizarre metal-rich asteroid Psyche. During the encounter, ...

James Webb Discovers a Rare Giant Planet With Surprisingly Earth-Like Temperatures

May 21, 2026 Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered a rare world unlike anything in our solar system — a giant planet about the size of Saturn with surprisingly Earth-like ...

NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Uses Mars as a Giant Slingshot Toward a Mysterious Metal World

May 26, 2026 NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a giant gravitational slingshot to continue its journey toward a strange metal rich asteroid. The close flyby boosted the spacecraft’s speed by about ...

NASA Stunned as Strange Solar Radio Burst Lasts 19 Days

May 23, 2026 NASA scientists were stunned when a strange radio signal from the Sun refused to fade away. Instead of lasting a few hours or days like normal solar radio bursts, this one persisted for an ...

Mars May Have Once Had an Ocean and This Chaotic Valley Is a Big Clue

May 15, 2026 A colossal valley near Mars’s equator is revealing dramatic clues about the Red Planet’s watery and volcanic past. Stretching roughly 1,300 kilometers, Shalbatana Vallis was carved billions of ...

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Accidentally Pulled a Rock out of Mars

May 11, 2026 NASA’s Curiosity rover had an unexpectedly stubborn Mars souvenir after drilling into a rock nicknamed “Atacama” — the entire chunk ripped loose from the ground and stayed stuck to the ...

This Strange Planet Pair Shouldn’t Exist, but It Does

May 7, 2026 A bizarre planetary pairing 190 light-years away is challenging everything astronomers thought they knew about how worlds form. A “lonely” hot Jupiter — typically found without nearby ...

Blue Origin’s New Moon Lander Just Survived Extreme Space Testing on Earth

May 6, 2026 A bold step toward returning humans to the Moon is underway with Blue Origin’s uncrewed MK1 “Endurance” lander, designed to test the technologies that future astronauts will rely on. Built in ...

NASA Just Tested a Powerful New Thruster That Could Send Humans to Mars

May 6, 2026 A powerful new electromagnetic thruster has taken a major step forward after a successful high-energy test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Fueled by lithium vapor and driven by intense ...

Scientists Stunned as JWST Finds Ice Clouds on a Giant Alien Planet

Apr. 22, 2026 Scientists have discovered unexpected water-ice clouds on a distant, Jupiter-like exoplanet, challenging current atmospheric models. By directly imaging Epsilon Indi Ab with the James Webb Space ...

NASA Curiosity Rover Finds Mysterious Life Linked Molecules on Mars

Apr. 28, 2026 Curiosity has detected a surprising variety of organic molecules on Mars, including compounds tied to the chemistry of life. Some of these molecules may be billions of years old, preserved in ancient ...

NASA Just Took a Huge Step Toward the Moon After Artemis II Success

May 4, 2026 Artemis II proved NASA’s deep space systems are ready for the next leap. Orion survived its high-speed return with improved heat shield performance and pinpoint landing accuracy, while the SLS ...

NASA Shuts Down 49-Year-Old Voyager 1 Instrument to Keep It Alive

May 4, 2026 Voyager 1 just powered down a nearly 50-year-old instrument to stay alive in deep space. The spacecraft is running critically low on energy, forcing NASA to make careful sacrifices to keep its ...

This “forbidden” Exoplanet Has an Atmosphere Scientists Can’t Explain

Apr. 6, 2026 A strange “forbidden” planet spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope is turning planetary science on its head. TOI-5205 b, a Jupiter-sized world orbiting a small, cool star, has an atmosphere ...

Meteor Impacts May Have Sparked Life on Earth, Scientists Say

Apr. 3, 2026 Asteroid impacts may have helped kick-start life on Earth by creating hot, chemical-rich environments ideal for early biology. These impact-generated hydrothermal systems could have lasted thousands ...