The first astronauts to set foot on Mars should hunt for signs of past or present Red Planet life.
That’s the overarching conclusion of an in-depth report about human Mars exploration from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that came out today (Dec. 9).
“The detection of life on Mars is a persistent top priority for explorers of many disciplines, and it…
This supermassive black hole flung out matter at 134 million mph: 'On a scale almost too big to imagine'
December 10, 2025
Supermassive black holes are notoriously messy eaters, but the behemoth at the heart of spiral galaxy NGC 3783 really takes the cake — and then flings it out into space at a fifth the speed of light.
Astronomers recently spotted a gale of hot, charged particles erupting…
Russian Soyuz capsule lands on Earth to return crew of 3 home after months on International Space Station (video)
December 10, 2025
Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut are safely back on Earth after spending eight months aboard the International Space Station.
Soyuz MS-27 crewmates Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos, along with Jonny Kim…
Uranus's small moons are dark, red, and water-poor
December 9, 2025
This article was originally published at Eos. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The solar system’s oddball planet has some pretty odd moons, too. The first infrared spectra of Uranus’s small inner moons, which will be presented on 18 December at the 2025 AGU Annual Meeting in New Orleans, have shown that their surfaces…
Can the U.S. beat China to the moon, and will NASA have the resources to do so?
These were just some of the considerations raised when SpaceX billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman once again appeared before a Senate committee Wednesday (Dec. 3) for a bid at NASA…
Just as the sun slips behind the Chilean Andes, it seemed to send up a tiny emerald flare. The photograph, taken from Cerro Pachón in Chile by NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador Petr Horálek, captures a classic but elusive atmospheric trick of the light: the green flash.
What…
In the middle of Mauritania’s Sahara Desert, surrounded by an ocean of sand, lies a colossal stone spiral that seems almost too perfect to be natural. From orbit, in a recent image taken by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission, it looks like a target etched into the desert: the Richat Structure, better known as the Eye of the Sahara.
What is it?
The…
December's 'Cold Moon' rises: See breathtaking images of the final full moon of 2025
December 8, 2025
The final full moon of 2025 treated stargazers to a high-flying lunar spectacle as the “Cold Moon” glowed among the stars of the constellation Taurus on Dec. 4.
December’s full moon was the third in a string of “Supermoons” — full moons that…
A team of international researchers say they’ve uncovered new data on the world’s first recorded solar eclipse using a surprising source — ancient Chinese texts. These findings could help us understand more about the progression of the Earth’s rotation…
See the metal guts of a satellite in this wild X-ray view | Space photo of the day for Dec. 4, 2025
December 5, 2025
In a hangar outside Zurich, a veteran of low Earth orbit lay under a kind of medical scanner no spacecraft was ever designed for. The patient was the European Retrievable Carrier mission, or EURECA, a 16.-4-foot-long (5 meters) European satellite that flew on the space shuttle Atlantis in early 1992 and, unusually for a satellite, actually came home. Instead of engineers with wrenches, its exam…
