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In the early 1930s, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky noticed galaxies spinning faster than their visible mass could explain. He proposed an invisible substance—dark matter—as the cosmic glue holding them together.

An international team led by researchers from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has made a major breakthrough in planetary science: for the first time, they have systematically classified six distinct tectonic regimes that govern how rocky planets evolve.

The outer planets of the solar system are swarmed by ice-wrapped moons. Some of these, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, harbor hidden oceans of liquid water between an icy crust and a rocky core—making them prime candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life.

In a significant shift, NASA and Boeing have agreed to keep astronauts off the next Starliner mission, opting instead for an uncrewed cargo test flight to validate the spacecraft’s safety. The decision follows a troubled 2024 crewed mission that left two NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for over nine months—and forced their return on a SpaceX capsule.

There's always a touch of melancholy when a chapter that has absorbed years of work comes to an end. In the case of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), those years amount to nearly 20—and now the telescope has completed its mission. Yet some endings are also important beginnings, opening new paths for the entire scientific community.

Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies (DSFGs) are the monsters of the early universe. They churn out stars at incredible rates—sometimes thousands of solar masses per year. But they are notoriously hard to find because they are shrouded in thick clouds of dust that block visible light. Recently, a team led by Longji Bing was inspecting the COSMOS field when they stumbled upon a surprise: a massive galaxy, designated AC-2168, existing just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Tracing the origins of Earth's lost neighbor, Theia: 4.5 billion years ago, a collision with this Mars-sized body led to the formation of the Moon. Scientists analyze isotopic fingerprints in rocks to uncover Theia's history, suggesting it once orbited closer to the Sun alongside Earth.

Fresh off a successful second mission, Blue Origin is throttling up. CEO Dave Limp has announced "incredible upgrades" to the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket starting as soon as mission No. 3. By pushing their BE-4 and BE-3U engines to new limits, and introducing a future super-heavy variant, Blue Origin is positioning itself as a serious contender against SpaceX's Starship and NASA's SLS.

Cellular communication, GPS, and weather monitoring now rely on mega-constellations like Starlink and Kuiper. But as these networks swell to tens of thousands of satellites, the traditional method of managing them—where ground stations talk to every single satellite—is creating a massive data bottleneck. A new paper proposes a radical shift: let the satellites manage themselves.

Cosmic rays constantly bombard Earth, but their energy spectrum isn't a smooth line. Around 3 PeV (quadrillion electron volts), the number of rays drops sharply, creating a "knee" in the graph. The cause of this drop has been a mystery for nearly seven decades. Now, groundbreaking results from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) have pinpointed the source of these high-energy particles: micro-quasars within our own Milky Way.

On November 5, 2025, NASA's Europa Clipper was busy testing its Stellar Reference Units—star-tracking cameras used to keep the spacecraft oriented. In a single frame, covering just 0.1% of the sky, it captured a field of stars... and something else. A tiny, pale dot near the edge was actually the planet Uranus, floating 2 billion miles away.

Ancient Mars was wet, but is there liquid water today? In 2018, the MARSIS radar instrument detected a bright reflection under the south polar ice, suggesting a 20km-wide buried lake. This would be huge for habitability. But keeping water liquid there requires impossible amounts of salt or heat. Now, a second radar instrument, SHARAD, has taken a closer look using a special maneuver, and the results challenge the "lake" theory.