A comment by Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, sparked a strong public response from the Chinese government. But due to legal and practical reasons, no country could take over the Moon anytime soon.
It has taken eight months to test and calibrate all of the instruments and modes of the James Webb Space Telescope. A scientist on the team explains what it took to get Webb up and running.
We should not be surprised that some of the innumerable rocks on Mars have weird shapes, because many have been sand-blasted by wind erosion for billions of years.
In June 1972, the first United Nations conference on the human environment coincided with the release of David Bowie’s iconic Ziggy Stardust album. Both still feel disturbingly relevant today
Current trends suggest that powerful nations are defining the rules of resource use in space and satellite access in ways that will make it hard for developing nations to ever catch up.
When Indigenous peoples lose their river flow to dams, satellite programs like Landsat – which is celebrating its 50th anniversary – can help them fight for their resources.
In the past 10 years, international alliances on Earth have begun to expand into space. Nations with similar interests collaborate with one another while competing with other space blocs.
The astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey for the 2020s lays out plans to search for life on distant planets, understand the formation of galaxies and solve deep mysteries of physics.
Remote sensing satellites provide the crucial data that helps scientists model disasters so that they can work on predicting avalanche patterns in future.
NASA has only mapped 40% of the potentially dangerous asteroids that could crash into Earth. New projects will boost that number, and upcoming missions will test tech that could prevent collisions.
What happens to the International Space Station when tensions on Earth rise? A space policy expert explains how the ISS is run and how Russian aggression has threatened its operation in the past – and now.
With about 200 orbital launches scheduled and ambitious missions on everything from lunar bases to the search for life in the works, there’s a lot to watch in 2022. An astronomer explains the highlights.