Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the "Goldilocks Zone" around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet's surface—a ...
Asteroid mining companies are finally getting off the ground, and that is raising some concerns about the impact those activities will have on the space environment. A new paper published in Acta Astronautica by Anna Marie ...
Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their ...
The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday that it would extend its Mars probe mission, now in its fifth year, for an additional three, underlining the oil-rich state's space ambitions.
Most near-Earth asteroids are thought to drift in from the main asteroid belt. But a small subset may have a much closer origin: the moon. One intriguing example is 469219 Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3), an Earth quasi-satellite ...
Betelgeuse is the star that everybody can't wait to see blow up, preferably sooner rather than later. That's because it's a red supergiant on the verge of becoming a supernova and there hasn't been one explode this close ...
Astronomers analyzing data from Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered the fastest-ever spinning asteroid with a diameter over half a kilometer—a feat uniquely enabled by Rubin. The study provides crucial information about ...
The giant planets weren't always where we find them today. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed in a more compact configuration and later underwent a violent reshuffling that scattered them to their current positions. ...
Much remains to be known about the chemical composition of small asteroids. Their potential to harbor valuable metals, materials from the early solar system, and the possibility of obtaining a geochemical record of their ...
Observations with the instrument SPHERE at ESO's Very Large Telescope have produced an unprecedented gallery of "debris disks" in exoplanetary systems.
