Astronomy and space Archives

Astronomy and space

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Back to the Moon: inside the Artemis II mission

Artemis crew taking part in an integrated ground systems test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida

Building a better laser on the Moon

Ultrastable devices could be housed in dark lunar craters

Radio gaga: surfing the long wavelengths of the universe

Benjamin Giblin reviews Radio Universe: How to Explore Space Without Leaving Earth by Emma Chapman

Latest news

Dark energy survey unveils the largest 3D map of the universe

NASA launches crewed Artemis II mission to the Moon

India announces three new telescopes in the Himalayan desert

Artist's impression of the NLST observatory

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Research headlines

Earth’s magnetic field could be ‘ringing’ with dark matter

Gravitational waves could leave traces in light from cold atoms

Artist's illustration showing two black holes coming together and emitting gravitational waves that radiate outwards, warping a grid of space-time as they go. In the foreground, little Bohr-model atoms are emitting different colours of light in different directions, and a graph below is keeping track of the emissions. Everything is set against a background of stars and glowing gas.

Gap in neutrino energy spectrum raises questions about cosmic environments

A photo of a detector buried deep in solid ice, connected to the surface by a cable

Evidence for a ‘forbidden range’ of black hole masses emerges in gravitational wave observations

Stars in this range may form a long-predicted type of supernova instead

Newton’s law describes gravity on cosmological scales, galaxy clusters reveal

Observations appear to rule out MOND, but not everyone agrees

Gravitational effects could shed more light on the Hubble tension

Two new ways to measure the Hubble constant

Perseverance finds evidence for an ancient river delta on Mars

New analyses of the Jezero impact crater reveal signs of flowing water

Could lightning occur on Mars?

MAVEN probe captures signature of a "whistler"

Lunar magnetic field mystery may finally have an explanation

Physicists weren’t sure why Moon rocks brought back during the Apollo missions are more strongly magnetized than models predict

Explore more in astronomy and space

Thumbs up to Artemis II: a jigsaw puzzle

Can you reconstruct the space image we’ve pulled apart?

Four astronauts floating in a space capsule holding thumbs up and smiling

One giant leap: Artemis II returns humanity to the Moon

Artemis II has returned humanity to the Moon, gripping the whole world. Keith Cooper follows the mission’s journey and looks at what comes next for humans in space

Orion module in foreground with the Moon behind and then in the far distance a crescent of Earth

Exploring the astrophysics behind Project Hail Mary

Author Andy Weir and astrophysicist Becky Smethurst unpack the physics in the new Hollywood space epic

A rubbish challenge: how do we dump space junk?

Katherine Courtney and Alice Gorman talk about the danger of space debris and what we need to do about it

An external pallet packed with old nickel-hydrogen batteries is pictured shortly after mission controllers in Houston commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release it into space

Stripes of Enceladus: a jigsaw puzzle

Can you reconstruct the astrophysics image we’ve pulled apart?

Long-distance quantum sensor network advances the search for dark matter

Physicists in China have set the tightest constraint yet on a parameter known as axion-nucleon coupling

A net made from faintly glowing filaments and bright nodes appears poised to scoop up a dark-purple region of space

Quantum memories could help make long-baseline optical astronomy a reality

Single-photon interferometry achieved over 1.5 km

Ancient reversal of Earth’s magnetic field took an extraordinarily long time

Field-flipping event 40 million years ago in the Eocene epoch lasted 70,000 years

A researcher in a laboratory looking through samples

2D materials help spacecraft electronics resist radiation damage

Transistors based on atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenides appear particularly robust

Composite image showing a spacecraft launch, a diagram of circuits, and an excerpt from the sheet music of the "Anthem of Fudan University"

Black hole is born with an infrared whimper

Observation sheds new light on how some massive stars fade away

Illustration of a newly formed black hole

Asteroid deflection: why we need to get it right the first time

Aerospace engineer Rahil Makadia on the danger of asteroid “keyholes”

Photo of Rahil Makadia at an alpine lake

Earthquake-sensing network detects space debris as it falls to Earth

Proof-of-principle experiment resolved the shock waves produced by the Shenzhou-15 module when it re-entered the atmosphere

Graphic showing the path of space debris re-entering the atmosphere. The re-entry path is shown in bright yellow with contours fading to dark purple, and is superimposed on a brown-green-and-black contour plot of the terrain beneath it. A curved horizon in the background indicates that the image is shown from the perspective of someone looking down on the planet from space

‘Relief’ as industrial megaproject in Chile that threatened world’s darkest skies is cancelled

The green hydrogen and ammonia project would have increased light pollution at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert

Samples from the far side of the Moon shed light on lunar asymmetry

Unusual isotopic ratio in samples brought back by Chang'e-6 reveals clues about the early history of Earth's satellite

Diagram showing a meteor crashing into the Moon, triggering an upwelling of magma and leaving a huge crater

Unusual astronomical event might be a ‘superkilonova’

Merger of two neutron stars in the aftermath of a supernova may have been observed for the first time, though questions remain

Three images showing in succession a massive star exploding, two neutron stars being born in the aftermath, and the neutron stars merging in a burst of red light

Interactions between dark matter and neutrinos could resolve a cosmic discrepancy

Finding challenges the standard model of cosmology

Photo of the Blanco telescope dome against a starry night sky

New cosmic map will put dark-matter theories to the test

COSMOS-Web uses JWST’s enhanced imaging capabilities

European Space Agency unveils first images from Earth-observation ‘sounder’ satellite

Data from the mission will help improve the accuracy of weather forecasting

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Particle and nuclear | Workshop 26th Hellenic School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity 19 April — 21 September 2026 | Corfu, Greece
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Astronomy and space | Conference Eighth Spacetime Conference 14—17 September 2026 | Albena, Bulgaria

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