https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org. A new study debunks a recent claim that astronomers may have detected a lunar-mass primordial black hole. In a reanalysis of observations from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), researchers found that the star nicknamed "Phoebe" was simply doing something ordinary that many stars do: changing its brightness naturally over time. The new findings have been reported in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 17. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-reanalysis-phoebe-variable-star-primordial.html Astronomy Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:20:01 EDT news701696960 One year ago, on July 1, 2025, astronomers discovered a fascinating new object moving through the solar system. Detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), the object was quickly recognized as something special. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-billion-years-interstellar-comet-older.html Astronomy Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news701440080 NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-swift-telescope-falling-earth.html Space Exploration Sun, 28 Jun 2026 11:23:34 EDT news701864592 Astronomers have uncovered new details about the black hole that ripped apart a star in a tidal disruption event named AT2024tvd. Findings suggest it is a wandering supermassive black hole—the kind that is not located at the center of a visible galaxy. The paper outlining this research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 12. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-center-stellar-death-supermassive-black.html Astronomy Sun, 28 Jun 2026 09:20:01 EDT news701352594 Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), astronomers have discovered a new millisecond pulsar as part of the ongoing Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-metre (SMART) survey. The discovery is reported in a research paper published June 17 on the arXiv preprint server. The work has also been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-millisecond-pulsar-murchison-widefield-array.html Astronomy Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:40:01 EDT news701407747 A large asteroid will zip past Earth this weekend, but don't worry: It poses no danger. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-large-harmless-asteroid-earth-weekend.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:01:35 EDT news701762471 Uranus and Neptune remain two of the most mysterious objects in the solar system, primarily because they have been visited only by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Their "ice giant" moniker comes from longstanding hypotheses that their interiors are comprised of an icy mantle beneath their hydrogen-helium atmospheres. While Jupiter and Saturn are also composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, Uranus and Neptune are hypothesized to have a layered structure composed of icy elements in their interiors. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-uranus-neptune-magma-worlds-ice.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:20:01 EDT news701682242 A mission to raise the orbit of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pegasus-deploy-link-monthslong-orbit.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:00:03 EDT news701700302 The subject of today's NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is an ancient inhabitant of our galaxy. This sparkling scene features a globular cluster: a collection of tens of thousands to millions of stars, all tightly bound together under the influence of gravity. There are more than 150 globular clusters in our galaxy, though there may be others still undiscovered, hidden from view by dust or densely packed fields of stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hubble-spies-ancient-chandelier-cluster.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:40:01 EDT news701698470 In May 2024, auroras were observed at unusually low latitudes across the globe, lighting up skies that rarely see such displays. Inside Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space surrounding our planet and dominated by its intrinsic magnetic field, something significant was finally observed. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-superstorm-drew-current-ions-earth.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news701681641 How do you teach someone to look at the moon? Not glance at it, the way we all have on a clear night, but truly read it, the way a geologist reads a hillside. That was the challenge NASA set itself before Artemis II, because when Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen swung around the far side of the moon this April, the first humans to make the journey in more than 50 years, their most valuable scientific instrument was not a camera or a sensor. It was the trained human eye. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-taught-astronauts-moon.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:20:05 EDT news701685901 An international team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and a natural phenomenon known as gravitational lensing to achieve a definitive characterization of LAP1-B, an ultra-faint galaxy from 13 billion years ago. Expanding upon initial detections, this new study revealed a record-breaking low oxygen abundance—merely 1/240th that of the sun. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-chemically-primitive-galaxy-billion-years.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:40:05 EDT news697991532 Astronomers from Germany and Turkey have analyzed available data from various space telescopes to investigate an ultraluminous X-ray source designated X-4, which is located in the nearby galaxy NGC 4631. Results of the new study, published June 22 on the preprint server arXiv, yield important insights into the spectral and timing variability of this source. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ultraluminous-ray-source-whale-galaxy.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:20:04 EDT news701690531 Greece is planning "a first historic mission" to send a Greek astronaut to the International Space Station, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' office announced Friday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-greece-historic-iss-space-mission.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:07 EDT news701692001 Lurking at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of the sun, surrounded by a puzzling collection of young, massive stars whose orbits have long defied explanation. Astronomers have proposed various competing theories to account for these stars, but none has been able to explain all of them together. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-story-milky-mysterious-stars.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:20:01 EDT news701609326 The NASA Artemis program, now supported by 67 countries under the Artemis Accords, plans to return humans to the moon by 2028. A recent White House Executive Order has gone further, directing NASA to establish a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-china-moon-bases-life-earth.html Space Exploration Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:40:05 EDT news701674081 Researchers from the University of Oxford have uncovered evidence that Mars once hosted enormous, Earth-like magmatic systems deep beneath its surface—despite the planet lacking the plate tectonics long thought necessary for this kind of geological complexity. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-evidence-vast-hidden-magma.html Astrobiology Fri, 26 Jun 2026 05:00:04 EDT news701604001 The Gaia mission has allowed researchers to understand the motions of stars like never before, even revealing possible interactions between our solar system and nearby stars. Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Nathan Kaib and collaborator Sean Raymond (Universite de Bordeaux) have found that a recent stellar passage likely triggered a huge increase in comet formation as the star's gravity altered Oort cloud objects' orbits, sending them cascading into the inner solar system. We may even still be feeling the effects of this passage today. This work is being presented at the American Astronomical Society Division on Dynamical Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ancient-stellar-flyby-period-comets.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:40:04 EDT news701625061 Nearly every massive galaxy observed hosts a supermassive black hole at its center. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that some of these supermassive black holes may even be too big for the galaxy they're found in, challenging astronomers' understanding of these objects and prompting questions about their growth in the early universe. Astronomers are still investigating many key questions about these mysterious and powerful objects, and studying them can help researchers understand how galaxies form and grow. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-supermassive-black-holes-mysterious.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:00:02 EDT news701610902 Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the universe, but they aren't always silent. When two black holes are close enough to each other, they spiral toward one another, eventually crashing in an enormous explosion and forming a single, larger black hole. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-colliding-black-holes-reveals-signature.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:00:10 EDT news701606881 The European-Chinese Smile mission reached its designated science orbit on June 20, 2026. The team is now embarking on a two-month campaign to commission the spacecraft, which involves switching on and testing its toolbox of science instruments. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spacecraft-science-orbit.html Space Exploration Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:40:02 EDT news701604773 Earlier this year, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) completed observations that mapped 47 million galaxies across 11 billion light-years, allowing astronomers to better evaluate the large-scale structure of the visible universe. After studying these data, astronomers Francesco Sylos Labini and Marco Galoppo say the universe may not look the same in all directions. Their results, published in Nature, contradict a fundamental assumption in modern cosmology. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-universe-large-scales-desi.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:50:01 EDT news701609313 This striking pair of galaxies located 80 million light-years from Earth lies in the constellation Leo against a backdrop of distant galaxies. The barred spiral galaxy NGC 3504 is seen on the right, and the spiral galaxy NGC 3512 is on the left. Although the two galaxies are thought to be physically close to one another, no clear evidence of ongoing gravitational interaction has been found. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-image-galaxy-pair-ngc.html Astronomy Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:00:08 EDT news701590981 The space shuttle Endeavour, which took astronauts into orbit 25 times, went on display at the California Science Center on its final mission Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-space-shuttle-ready-mission-california.html Space Exploration Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:50:01 EDT news701580098 Scientists have detected the "fingerprints" of a black hole's event horizon—the boundary from which nothing can escape—for the first time, according to research published Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fingerprints-black-hole-event-horizon.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:20:01 EDT news701536415 An international collaboration has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets ever detected: rare "super-puff" planets with densities lower than candy floss. The study—led by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Université Côte d'Azur/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur and the University of Birmingham—has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-super-puff-planets-lighter-candy.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:10:02 EDT news701508781 Life on Earth took a long evolutionary journey that eventually created us, the purportedly intelligent species that dominates the planet. But there was no grand plan or design, only happenstance, nature and luck. Life on Earth suffered multiple extinctions, but got up, dusted itself off and continued on its long march to complexity. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gravitational-tides-earth-extinctions.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:00:01 EDT news701516829 A new look at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy by Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with NASA contributions, overlaps with a region scientists will observe with NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching later this summer. This sneak peek gives astronomers a major jumpstart on a core Roman survey, helping scientists learn more than they could from either telescope alone. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-euclid-mission-view-milky-heart.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:50:04 EDT news701540581 In September 2025, NASA announced that its Perseverance rover had discovered a potential biosignature, which is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin. A new paper, published in Science Advances, unambiguously confirms the detection of organic carbon, the building blocks of life, in the same two rocks from the Bright Angel formation, and describes in more detail exactly what we can say about that organic matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-carbon-bright-angel-formation-mars.html Astrobiology Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:10:04 EDT news701538061 A University of Iowa-led physics team has detailed the extreme expansion of a magnetic cloud that originated from a huge, gaseous explosion on the sun. In a new study, the researchers describe the inflated magnetic cloud as recorded by spacecraft in separate, fortuitous locations as the cloud approached Earth. During that interval—spanning some 13 million miles (21 million kilometers)—the cloud expanded by a fifth of its original size during its approach to Earth, as plasma inside the super-expanded bubble heated up. The researchers termed the striking increase in size a "super expansion." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-solar-blast-magnetic-cloud-grew.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:50:02 EDT news701537521