Jonathan O'Callaghan is an award-winning freelance journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics, commercial spaceflight and space exploration. Follow him on X @Astro_Jonny
The Strongest Solar Storm in 20 Years Did Little Damage, but Worse Space Weather Is Coming
Years of careful planning helped safeguard against last weekend’s severe space weather, but we still don’t know how we’d cope with a monster event
SpaceX’s Starship Could Save NASA’s Beleaguered Mars Sample Return Mission
Facing budgetary pressure for its Mars Sample Return program, NASA has turned to private industry for ideas—perhaps with one specific company in mind
Astronomers Fight to Save X-ray Telescope as NASA Dishes Out Budget Cuts
The Chandra X-ray Observatory faces a premature end under new funding cuts proposed by NASA—and astronomers aren’t happy
‘Interstellar’ Meteor Signal May Have Been a Truck—So What Was Collected from the Ocean Floor?
New analyses cast doubt on claims that a meteor witnessed over the South Pacific in 2014 came from another star system and raise questions about a high-profile expedition to recover the fireball’s fragments from the seafloor
JWST Will Finally Hunt for Alien Moons—And Much More
The next year of science for the James Webb Space Telescope has been selected. It includes remote galaxy observations and, at last, a hunt for exomoons
JWST Solves Decades-Old Mystery of Nearby Supernova
Scientists have finally found the compact object at the heart of the famous supernova of 1987, and it’s not a black hole
Space Lasers Will Seek a New Kind of Gravitational Waves
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open a new era in astronomy that brings scientists to the brink of studying gravitational waves from the beginning of time
JWST’s Puzzling Early Galaxies Bend Astrophysics
Rather than ripping up our fundamental models of the universe, the unexpectedly big and bright galaxies spied in the early universe by JWST probably have astrophysical explanations
Japan Reaches the Moon, but the Fate of Its Precision Lander Is Uncertain
Japan’s SLIM precision-landing spacecraft—a potential game-changer for upcoming lunar exploration—may expire on the moon before fulfilling its mission
Bizarre Dark Object Could Be First-Known ‘Empty’ Galaxy from the Early Universe
A serendipitously discovered object nearly as massive as the Milky Way appears to be made of primordial gas that has formed almost no stars
The Science of 2024’s Epic Solar Eclipse, the Last for a Generation
Unique studies of gravity waves, atmospheric holes and dazzling coronal displays will accompany April’s total solar eclipse across the U.S., Mexico and Canada
In the Search for Life beyond Earth, NASA Dreams Big for a Future Space Telescope
Astronomers are moving ahead in planning NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, a telescope designed to answer the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?
The Second Most Powerful Cosmic Ray in History Came from—Nowhere?
Amaterasu—the most powerful cosmic ray seen in three decades—seems to come from an empty point of the sky. New telescopes may solve the mystery of its origins
Mysterious ‘Tasmanian Devil’ Space Explosion Baffles Astronomers
Scientists still can’t explain what is causing unusually bright explosions in space—but a surprising observation might offer clues
‘Monster Quake’ Hints at Mysterious Source within Mars
Images from each and every spacecraft now orbiting Mars have ruled out a meteorite strike as the cause of a 4.7-magnitude marsquake, the strongest temblor ever detected beyond Earth
Beyond Pluto, New Horizons Gets a Reprieve from NASA
NASA has reversed course on plans to curtail the New Horizons spacecraft’s planetary science studies following a rebellion among the mission’s leaders
Pangaea Ultima, the Next Supercontinent, May Doom Mammals to Far-Future Extinction
250 million years from now, the emergence of a new supercontinent could render most of Earth’s surface uninhabitable for mammals
This Bizarre Star Could Become One of the Strongest Magnets in the Universe
Magnetars possess magnetic fields that are trillions of times stronger than those of ordinary stars. Now we might have seen one of these extraordinary objects about to form
Russia Launches First Moon Mission after Half-Century Hiatus
The Luna 25 spacecraft will attempt to land at the lunar south pole for the first time in a hunt for valuable water ice
A Background ‘Hum’ Pervades the Universe. Scientists Are Racing to Find Its Source
Astronomers are now seeking to pinpoint the origins of an exciting new form of gravitational waves that was announced earlier this year
Nearby Supernova Gives Unique View of a Dying Star’s Last Days
Astronomers are piecing together the final moments of supernova 2023ixf and learning more about it than any other in recent history
Europe’s Euclid Space Telescope Is Launching a New Era in Studies of the ‘Dark Universe’
The Euclid mission will probe dark energy and dark matter like never before, setting the stage for an international, multiobservatory push to solve some of the universe’s deepest mysteries
At Last, Astronomers May Have Seen the Universe’s First Stars
Telltale evidence gathered by the James Webb Space Telescope suggests we’re closer than ever before to finding elusive Population III stars
JWST Will Hunt for Dead Solar Systems—And Much More—In Its Second Year of Science
White dwarfs, Earth-sized exoplanets, early galaxies and even Saturn’s moon Enceladus are on the agenda for JWST’s second year in space, but exomoons and others miss out