News

China Unveils a Massive 5-Meter Composite Module for its Next-Generation Reusable Rocket So far, America has remained ahead in the new space race. But its biggest rival is making continual steps to catch up. China announced another step in that direction with the unveiling of its first ever reusable five-meter-wide composite propulsion module, announced in a press release on April 11th. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Behold, the Solar System in All its X-ray Glory Using the eROSITA space telescope, MPE researchers have successfully isolated the X-ray glow from our Solar System, revealing its impact on the soft X-ray sky. The findings, published in Science, underscore the importance of considering Solar System processes when analyzing X-ray data and highlight eROSITA’s role in advancing not only astrophysics but also heliophysics. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Exoplanets Without Lots of Water Can’t Maintain Their Carbon Cycles Water is critical to life because cells need liquid to function. That’s why scientists focus on finding and studying exoplanets in habitable zones. But even if they’re in habitable zones, exoplanets need lots of water to support their carbon cycles. So without water, exoplanets become inhospitable greenhouse planets, regardless if they’re in habitable zones or not. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

NASA’s SPHEREx Telescope Just Mapped the Cosmic Ices That Will Someday Build Planets New missions mean new capabilities – and one particularly interesting new mission is finally up and running. Data is starting to come in from SPHEREx, the medium-class surveyor that is mapping the entire sky every six months. A paper based on some of that early data was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal, mapping ice and compounds called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) throughout some interesting regions of our Milky Way. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has Discovered 11,000 New Asteroids, and It’s Barely Even Started! Rubin’s largest asteroid haul yet, gathered before the Legacy Survey of Space and Time even begins, is just the “tip of the iceberg” Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

What Happens When Light Goes Boom? Part 4: What Brad Bradington Is Good For Cherenkov radiation isn’t just a beautiful phenomenon. It turns up in nuclear reactors, in the upper atmosphere, in gamma ray telescopes on three continents, in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, and in hospital imaging suites. Here’s what a light boom is actually good for. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

“Immature” Lunar Soil Could Be Suitable for Roadways on the Moon Using lunar regolith simulant, a team of researchers demonstrated that “immature” regolith similar to what is expected around the Moon’s southern polar region is suitable for rovers to drive on. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

What Happens When Light Goes Boom? Part 3: Brad Bradington Sprints We have the crowd. We have the star. Now it’s time to put them together. Here’s exactly what happens — and why — when a charged particle outruns the local speed of light in a material. Also: why it’s always blue. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

How a Black Hole and a Shredded Star Could Light Up a Galaxy In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*’s intense gravitational pull. That didn’t happen, and the event was a cosmic fizzle. Instead, G2 skipped around the black hole. Various observations showed that it wasn’t just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars.Read More →

Small Trojan Asteroids Defy Expectations Understanding the beginning of the solar system requires us to look at some very strange places. One such place is at the so-called “Trojan” asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit in front of and behind it. But for a long time, these cosmic time capsules have held a mystery for astronomers: why are they color-coded? The populations of larger asteroids are very clear split into two distinct groups – the “reds” and the “less reds”, because apparently they’re all red to some extent. A new paper from researchers in Japan tried to solve this mystery by taking a close look atRead More →

Life Beyond Biosignatures: A New Method In The Search For Life Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) and National Institute for Basic Biology have developed a new method to detect extraterrestrial life without relying on traditional biosignatures. By modelling how life might spread between planets, they demonstrate that life could be detected through statistical patterns across planetary populations rather than on individual planets. This “agnostic biosignature” approach could assist in guiding future searches for life beyond Earth. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Comet R3 PanSTARRS at Perihelion We’re one comet down, and one to go for spring season 2026. We recently wrote about prospects for sungrazer C/2026 A1 MAPS and comet C/2025 R3 Pan-STARRS in April 2026. While the bad news is, Comet A1 MAPS disintegrated like so many sungrazers before it during its blistering close perihelion passage on April 4th, comet R3 Pan-STARRS put on an amazing dawn showing for early rising astrophotographers. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

To Survive Deep Space, Astronauts May Owe a Debt to Microscopic Worms Living long-term on the Moon means surviving the devastating toll that deep space takes on a human body. Astronauts in low gravity environments suffer muscle and bone loss, vision-altering fluid shifts, and heavy radiation exposure – all of which are incredibly hazardous to our biology. So, to help future lunar explorers survive, a new crew just arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). That might not sound surprising, except this crew is composed of worms. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

Watch This Dark Volcanic Ash Creep Across the Red Planet Mars is well known as a static, frozen desert. We tend to think of the only thing changing on the surface of the Red Planet is due to the occasional dust storm. But if you look closely – and are willing to wait decades – you’ll see the planet is very much alive – at least in the environmental sense. The European Space Agency just released some spectacular new images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on its Mars Express Orbiter, one of which shows a surprisingly “fast” geological change happening in Utopia Planitia.Read More →