Landing on Mars is extremely difficult.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists preparing to land the Rosalind Franklin rover in a few years are nervously awaiting the landing of Nasa’s Perseverance rover.
Artist’s depiction of a flare-coronal mass ejection event on Proxima Centauri.
Mark Myers, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav)
We observed a powerful flare and a huge burst of radio waves from our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, indicating violent space weather around the star.
ESA / DLR / FU Berlin
Three newly discovered bodies of liquid water deep beneath the south polar ice cap on Mars have planetary scientists intrigued.
There seems to be a network of underground bodies of liquid water at Mars’ south pole.
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
New findings boost chances of finding life on Mars, but there are better candidates in the solar system.
Shutterstock
Considering what we know about the key ingredients for life’s formation on Earth, here are three explanations for how this process may have occurred on our sister planet.
A radar mosaic image of Venus.
NASA.gov
News that Venus may harbor life has swept the globe. So how do we find out for sure? A planetary scientist explains what’s next.
JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic
The discovery of phosphine in the acidic clouds of Venus can’t be explained by any known chemical or geological processes.
Illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Perseverance rover onboard Mars
2020 is our best bet for finding life on the red planet.
Pluto, with its basin Sputnik Planitia on the right.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker
Pluto began hot inside, study of its surface fractures suggests
An artist’s conception of WASP-18b, a giant exoplanet that orbits very close to its star.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Pillitteri et al; Optical: DSS
Sometimes it is difficult to take a photograph of an exoplanet because the star illuminating it is too bright. Now there is a new ‘deluminator’ telescope that can block out the extra light.
Is there anybody out there?
Greg Rakozy/Unsplash
From the subatomic to the cosmic, don’t think for a second that we’re at the end of scientific history.
Artist’s impression of planet K2-18 b, its host star and an accompanying planet in this system.
ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
K2-18 b is now the exoplanet most likely to be habitable.
Much of Mars’s surface is covered by fine-grained materials that hide the bedrock. The above bedrock is mostly exposed and it is in these areas that micrometeorites likely to accumulate.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
NASA
Realising the silence of outer space was what made us appreciate our precarious position down on this pale blue dot – so beginning our obsession with extinction.
KPG_Payless/Shutterstock
We haven’t heard anything from alien civilisations, but perhaps they’ve heard us.
The fifth episode of the To the moon and beyond podcast series explores where we will be travelling in 2069.
A Sept. 20 citizen “raid” on Area 51, a secretive military installation long fancied to hold alien remains, has drawn worldwide interest.
Fer Gregory/Shutterstock.com
As more than a million people have indicated plans to partake in a citizen ‘raid’ on the famed Area 51 to ‘see them aliens,’ a scholar on the search for extraterrestrial life weighs in on the hype.
Varied terrain on Europa.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Whether anything could live in Europa’s subsurface ocean depends on what kind of salt it contains. Now scientists have found out.
Relative sizes of planets that are in a zone potentially compatible with life: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (named left to right; except for Earth, these are artists’ renditions).
NASA
The ancient question ‘Are we alone?’ has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.
Scale models of rockets at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s booth at the International Astronautical Congress.
FOCKE STRANGMANN/EPA
The space industry and global interest in all matters inter-planetary is growing.