Chinese-born cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang has become the latest deep-pocketed space enthusiast to set his sights on a trip around Mars. But first, he wants to take a ride around the moon on SpaceX's Starship. And SpaceX is willing to work with him.
The Southwest Research Institute-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instruments aboard ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft and NASA’s Europa Clipper made unique observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in late 2025. SwRI leads the UVS instruments on both spacecraft, simultaneously imaging both hemispheres of the comet and detecting the comet’s ultraviolet emissions.
Superluminous supernovae are the royalty in the supernova world. They're up to 100 times brighter than a standard supernova, and astrophysicists want to know why. New research shows that magnetars are responsible.
Exoplanet hunters are keen to find the next extrasolar earthlike planet, one that may harbor life as we know it. But preliminary results from a new study indicate that our galaxy may be filled with a plethora of exo-Venuses. Yet as one exoplanetary researcher notes: the template for such exo-worlds --- our own Venus --- has been ‘criminally underexplored.’
Spacecraft often use planets for gravity-assist or "slingshot" maneuvers. NASA's Psyche mission used Mars for that purpose during a May 15th flyby. The flyby accelerated the spacecraft and aimed it at its eventual destination, the asteroid 16 Psyche. The flyby was also an opportunity to take some pictures of Mars, and to test and calibrate the spacecraft's science instruments.
In 2014, researchers presented the discovery of water vapour plumes being emitted from Jupiter's moon Europa. This caused quite a stir; it meant that the moon's buried ocean was accessible without contending with the thick ice shell that concealed it. But new research by the same researchers questions those detections.
Typically when we think of astronomy, we think of pictures of M87 captured on a backyard telescope or the soaring colorful peaks of the Eagle Nebula seen by Hubble. But perhaps the most influential type of astronomy of the last 100+ years doesn’t directly result in the stunning pictures we’re so accustomed to today. It captures radio waves from some of the most interesting objects in the universe. And in her new book, The Echoing Universe: How Radio Astronomy Helps Us See the Invisible, Dr. Emma Chapman, a radio astronomer at the University of Nottingham, tracks how these longest wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum have influenced the practice of astronomy and our understanding of our place in the universe.
