Even experts were not prepared for the crispness of the new images from the James Webb space telescope.
Satellite imagery monitors environmental changes to inform agricultural decisions. Agricultural patterns are distinctly visible in this near-vertical false colour infrared photography of farmland south of Khartoum, Sudan.
(JSC/NASA)
Technologies being developed for growing food in space have contributed to advances in agriculture and crops on Earth.
China and the U.S. both have big plans for the Moon, but there are a number of reasons why no country could actually claim ownership of any land there.
3dScultor/iStock via Getty Images
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.
Realistic colour view of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
There may be life on Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn moon’s Enceladus.
The mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is fully aligned and producing incredibly sharp images, like this test image of a star.
NASA/STScI via Flickr
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.
Australia may soon have three commercial space launch facilities
A panorama stitched together from about 100 individual Curiosity images. The ‘door’ is circled, and is tiny and hard to see at this scale.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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.
David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in 1972: ‘an androgynous rockstar from outer space’.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
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
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and one of our closest neighbors in space. But it’s not a very welcoming place for an Earthling to visit.
There is a U.S. flag on the Moon, but in the future, countries may start to turn access to the Moon and asteroids into serious wealth.
NASA/Neil A. Armstrong
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.
NASA’s Landsat satellites have been monitoring changes on Earth’s landscape for 50 years.
NASA illustration
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 next decade, both a U.S.-led group and a collaboration between Russia and China aim to set up bases on the Moon.
Theasis/iStock via Getty Images
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.
SpaceX is seeking to expand its remit to include commercial low-Earth orbit launches.
SpaceX/Flickr
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.
A giant asteroid struck Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
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.
The International Space Station is run collectively by the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada.
NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center/Flickr
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.