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As the threat from space debris becomes a daily concern for satellite operators, the European Space Agency is developing innovative technologies to keep our orbits safe. At the Izaña station in Spain, ESA's Izaña-1 and Izaña-2 laser-ranging stations are testing a high-precision method to track debris, prevent collisions, and eventually, even nudge junk out of the way.

When an object from another star system visits ours, astronomers race to learn its secrets. But sometimes, the first clues are found not by looking forward, but by looking back. A new study reveals that the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)—a telescope designed to find planets around other stars—had captured images of our newest interstellar visitor, 3I/ATLAS, as far back as May 2025. Unearthing this "pre-discovery" data required a clever technique to find a faint,

From strange bright lights flanking the sun to rainbow-like halos seen from an airplane, Earth's atmosphere creates a stunning variety of optical displays. These phenomena are more than just beautiful—they are scientific clues, telling us about the properties of atmospheric particles. A recent paper suggests we can use this same science to decode the atmospheres of planets far beyond our solar system.