Rather randomly I’ve just returned from a theatre tour where my science show featured yeast in one of the experiments, so when research about yeast surviving Martian conditions crossed my desk, it immediately piqued my interest. These microscopic fungi that help our bread rise and our beer ferment might just have what it takes to endure one of the Solar System's harshest environments.

Mars is a planet of mystery! Its surface today is cold and dry, yet evidence suggests it was once home to flowing water. Most of the planet's remaining ice sits locked away at the poles, but recent observations have detected signals of hydrogen in equatorial regions that could indicate buried ice deposits where the environment should be too warm for ice to survive. How did frozen water end up at Mars's equator? It seems we might find the answer in Martian volcanoes.

White dwarfs are stellar corpses, the slowly cooling remnants of stars that ran out of fuel billions of years ago. Our Sun will eventually share this fate, collapsing into a compact object so dense that the heavier it becomes, the smaller it shrinks. This rather strange property is just one of the aspects of white dwarfs that makes them utterly fascinating and occasionally, utterly baffling. Sometimes we find white dwarfs as part of binary systems and they are usually cool and gently radiating their energy out into space. A team of astronomers have recently discovered a peculiar class of these binary systems that defies expectations. The pair of white dwarfs are orbiting each other faster than once per hour and exhibiting temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 degrees Kelvin, significantly hotter than expected and twice their usual size.

It rains on the Sun! Although not in any way we'd recognise from Earth. In the Sun's corona, the superheated atmosphere that extends millions of kilometres above its visible surface, cooler blobs of plasma occasionally form and fall back downward in what astronomers are calling coronal rain. Until now, the mechanism behind the rain has remained a mystery especially during solar flares where it seems to accelerate but researchers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy have finally cracked the puzzle.

Scientists have begun to piece together the origin story of a cataclysmic collision between two black holes that met their fate on an unusual orbital path. The merger, designated GW200208_222617 (that really rolls of the tongue,) stands out among gravitational wave detections as one of the rare events showing clear signs of orbital eccentricity, meaning the black holes followed a squashed, oval shaped orbit rather than a circular one as they spiralled toward their final encounter.

Impulse Space, the California-based venture founded by veteran SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has unveiled its proposed architecture for delivering medium-sized payloads to the moon, starting as early as 2028.

Modularity is taking off in more ways than one in space exploration. The design of the upcoming “Lunar Gateway” space station is supposed to be modular, with different modules being supplied by different organizations. In an effort to extend that thinking down to rovers on the ground, a new paper from researchers at Germany’s space agency (DLR), developed an architecture where a single, modular rover could be responsible for both exploration and carrying payloads around the Moon or Mars.

It’s great to see old astronomical observations come to light. Not only can these confirm or refute what’s known about historic astronomical events, but they can describe what early observers actually saw. A recent study cites two Arabic texts that may refer to accounts of two well-known supernovae seen in our galaxy: one in 1006 AD and another in 1181 AD.

We know lots about our Galaxy yet still, some regions still hold countless secrets. Recently, a team of astronomers using South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope uncovered 164 of them, compact radio rings. Each one smaller than an arcminute across, were hiding along the plane of the Milky Way, and were just waiting for a telescope powerful enough to reveal them.

For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted through interstellar space, its origin, a distant planetary system. This summer, that fragment finally entered our Solar System, becoming only the third confirmed interstellar visitor and earning the designation 3I/ATLAS. When astronomers at Auburn University pointed NASA's Swift Observatory toward this icy chunk, they detected water vapour streaming from its surface. It was revealed through the faint ultraviolet glow of hydroxyl molecules and was completely unexpected.

SpaceX closed out a dramatic chapter in the development of its super-heavy-lift Starship launch system with a successful flight test that mostly followed the script for the previous flight test.

Earth's atmosphere has always been the enemy of ground based astronomy and don’t I know it. What would otherwise be crisp, clean datasets gets turned into blurry smudges. Space telescopes avoid the problem entirely but can only photograph tiny fragments of sky. Now, a team of mathematicians has cracked the code with an elegant algorithm that strips away atmospheric interference in seconds, potentially giving ground based observatories space quality vision whilst keeping their ability to survey great regions of sky.

When I spotted a headline about Earth's ancient oceans and urea, my brain immediately went to the obvious place. Urea, the same compound found in urine. Yes, scientists are telling us that a component of wee played a crucial role in one of the most important events in our planet's history. Sometimes science really does have a sense of humour.

Avoiding, or at least limiting the damage from, geomagnetic storms is one of the most compelling arguments for why we should pay attention to space. Strong solar storms can have an impact on everything from air traffic to farming, and we ignore them at our own peril and cost. Despite that threat, the tools that we have applied to tracking and analyzing them have been relatively primitive. Both simulations and the physical hardware devoted to it require an upgrade if we are to accurately assess the threat a solar storm poses. As a first step, a new paper from a group led by researchers at the University of Michigan created a much more detailed simulation that shows how important it is that we also have the appropriate sensing hardware in place to detect these storms as they happen.

In a newly published novel titled “Hole in the Sky,” Cherokee science-fiction author Daniel H. Wilson blends Native American tales about alien civilizations with up-to-date speculation about UFOs, now also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs.

For decades, the dramatic difference between the Moon's two faces has been the subject of much debate. Now, a fresh look at the Moon's largest and oldest impact crater has revealed something quite unexpected. The asteroid that formed it seems to have hit from the opposite direction than everyone thought, and it created a radioactive splash zone that may finally explain the mystery. Even better, NASA's Artemis astronauts are about to land right in the middle of it.

When two galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes at their centres should eventually find each other and begin a gravitational dance that lasts millions of years. Despite decades of predictions, astronomers are still hunting for definitive proof these binary systems exist. A new review examines the clues scattered across the universe, from wobbling jets spanning hundreds of thousands of light years to specific spectral signatures, and explores why finding these black hole pairs matters for understanding both the past and future of our own Galaxy.

The JWST has pushed the boundaries of exoplanet characterization. But one thing it hasn't done yet is to determine if rocky exoplanets close to our Solar System can retain their atmospheres. The authors of a new study propose a new "five-scale height challenge" that will help astronomers obtain more precise atmospheric information on rocky exoplanets using Webb.

Betelgeuse, the stunning red star in Orion's shoulder, has been hiding a secret companion for years but proving it has been somewhat challenging. When the elusive "Betelbuddy" (I love that name) reached its maximum separation from the supergiant star last December, astronomers had just one chance before it disappeared behind Betelgeuse for another two years. Using NASA's most powerful space telescopes, researchers finally captured the tiny companion lurking in the overwhelming glare of a star 700 times larger than our Sun. But the real surprise wasn't just finding it, it was discovering what type of object it actually is, and what that reveals about one of the night sky's most famous stars and its puzzling six year brightening cycle.

Between 1 and 7 October, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express spacecraft turned their eyes towards interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, as it passed close to Mars.

Science fiction is edging closer to reality. A team of scientists has created a detailed roadmap for transforming Mars from a frozen, lifeless desert into a world where plants could grow and humans might one day breathe without spacesuits. The plan isn't about launching missions tomorrow, it’s about whether we should even try, and what recent breakthroughs in biology, climate engineering, and space launch technology tell us about what's now possible. But there's a catch, terraforming a planet like Mars might erase its geological history forever, destroying any traces of ancient Martian life and eliminating our chance to understand how worlds evolve. The question has shifted from "could we turn Mars green?" to something far more profound "should we?”

What if you could photograph something completely invisible? To our rather limited eyes that’s what astronomers seem to do all the time with infra red and radio astronomy to name a few. But, astronomers can do this in a rather intriguing way with something that does seem to be truly invisible! A team of astronomers have captured the latest "image" of a dark matter object a million times more massive than our Sun, not by seeing it, but by watching how it warps the light from galaxies billions of light years beyond it. Using an Earth sized telescope network they have revealed one of the smallest dark matter clumps ever found, offering a glimpse into the hidden structure of our universe.

Phosphine has caused quite a stir in the astronomical world lately. That was largely due to its (still hotly debated) detection in the atmosphere of Venus. While the only known way for phosphine to be created on terrestrial worlds, like Venus, is through some sort of biological origin, it is relatively common among larger gas giants and even “brown dwarfs” - failed stars larger than Jupiter but not quite large enough to start their own hydrogen fusion process. Previously, we hadn’t yet seen phosphine in the atmosphere of brown dwarf in other solar systems, but a new paper from a diverse group of researchers, available in pre-print form on arXiv, used data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find it for the first time. They also realized the mechanism that made it so hard to spot in the first place - the object’s metallicity.

The interior of the mysterious far side of the moon may be colder than the side constantly facing Earth, suggests a new analysis of rock samples co-led by a UCL and Peking University researcher.

An asteroid recently made the second closest pass to Earth ever observed on October 1st. And astronomers only found it after it had already completed its closest approach. That offers another lesson in how difficult it is to find small objects coming close to our planet in the vast dark ocean of space.

Billions of years ago, water flowed across Mars. Most scientists agree the red planet had rivers. But did those rivers flow into an ocean? New research from the University of Arkansas found strong evidence in Mars' geology of an ocean in the planet's northern hemisphere.

What if our understanding of Uranus and Neptune’s compositions have been wrong, specifically regarding their classifications as “ice giants”? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Zurich investigated the interior structures of Uranus and Neptune. This study has the potential to help scientists not only better understand the formation and evolution of Uranus and Neptune but could also provide key insights into Jupiter and Saturn, and gaseous exoplanets, too.

Astronomers find a nearly metal-free star in our own back yard, which tells us a few interesting things about early star formation.

Duplicating expensive resources is expensive and wasteful, and most people would agree it's unnecessary. However, the planned increase in major satellite constellations is currently causing a massive duplication of resources as individual companies and even countries try to set up their own infrastructure in space. What’s more, there is a relatively limited amount of space in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where many of these satellites are supposed to go - any more than that and a single collision could cause Kessler Syndrome, where many of the ones already in orbit would be destroyed and we wouldn’t be able to launch any more for a long time. A new paper from researchers at the National University of Defense Technology in China suggests an alternative to these multiple megaconstellations - a single, modular system similar to how cloud computing works on the current internet.

The China National Space Administration on Wednesday released a breathtaking image captured by the Tianwen-2 probe, showing the spacecraft and Earth framed together in a "celestial selfie."

October 2025 may provide a memorable sky scene, as Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon puts on an encore appearance at dusk. The comet joins Comet R2 SWAN, which slides 0.26 Astronomical Units (AU) past Earth on October 20th. Both are currently fine objects for binoculars or a small telescope, vying for top spot at magnitude +6.

Peering back into the early years of the universe requires scientists to make a lot of assumptions. But sometimes, we get better instruments that then allow them to either confirm or replace those assumptions. That happened recently when it came to our study of J0529, a supermassive black hole that is currently the brightest known quasar in the universe. A new paper from a massive team of researchers used the GRAVITY+ instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer to map this unique object’s Broad Line Region (BLR), and thereby calculated a new, updated mass that is 10 times smaller than previous estimates.

This ESA/Webb Picture of the Month shows eight stunning examples of gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing, which was first predicted by Einstein, occurs because massive objects like galaxies and clusters of galaxies dramatically warp the fabric of spacetime. When a massive foreground object lines up just so with a background galaxy, the light from the background galaxy bends as it navigates the warped spacetime on its way to our telescopes.

Black have no hair, but the material surrounding them does, and the two can interact in unusual ways. As observations from the Event Horizon Telescope show, the magnetic fields surrounding a black hole can change extremely fast.

Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has been constantly changing as it makes its way through our solar system. That’s to be expected, as, for the first time in potentially billions of years, it's getting close to the energy put out by a star. Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.

While no evidence of life beyond Earth has been found (yet), it is assumed that life and habitable planets are the norm (per the Copernican Principle). Meanwhile, exoplanet studies have revealed several rocky planets orbiting within the habitable zones of nearby dwarf suns. But as Columbia University Professor David Kipping argues in a recent paper, there is evidence that Earth could be an outlier, while rocky planets orbiting red dwarfs may not be capable of supporting advanced life.

New observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) identified an enormous a rogue planet with the strongest growth rate ever recorded. These observations reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second.

By modeling the limb darkening of a star, astronomers can get a better measure of the transit depth of an exoplanet. This will allow us to get better measurements of the size of exoplanets.

ESA’s Mars Express takes us on another mesmerizing flight over the highlands of Xanthe Terra to the smoother lowlands of Chryse Planitia. Billions of years ago, water surged through this region, creating many of the features we see today.

An international of researchers, including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI) have used the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover 12 black holes from 12.9 billion years ago, shedding light on how black holes and galaxies evolved in the early Universe.

Jupiter and its moons are busy in October. If skies are clear, be sure to set your alarm and follow the largest planet in our solar system this month. While massive Jupiter always warrants a view through even a small telescope, its four major Galilean moons warrant special interest, as we’re in the midst of a season of rare double shadow transits.

Enceladus’ ice continues to get more and more intriguing as researchers continue to unlock more secrets taken from a probe over ten years ago. When Cassini crashed into Saturn in 2017, it ended a 13 year sojourn that is still producing new research papers today. A recent one in Nature Astronomy from the researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Stuttgart found hints of organic molecules discovered for the first time on the icy moon, some of which could serve as precursors to even more advanced biomolecules.

Modeling something like geysers on a far-away moon seems like it should be easy. How much complexity could there possibly be when a geyser is simply a hole in some ice shooting superheated water through it? The answer is pretty complex, to be honest - enough that accurate models require a supercomputer to run on. Luckily, the supercomputing cluster at the University of Texas, known as the Texas Advanced Computing Center, gave some time to researcher modeling Enceladus’ ice plumes, and their recent paper in JGR Planets discusses the results, which show there might not be as much water and ice getting blown into orbit as originally thought.

Interest in icy moons has been growing steadily as they become more and more interesting to astrobiologists. Some take the majority of the attention, like Enceladus with its spectacular geysers. But there are interesting ones that might be hiding amongst even thicker ice shells in the Uranian system. A new paper published in Icarus from researchers at the Planetary Science Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of North Dakota, looks at what Ariel, the fourth biggest moon in the Uranian system, might look like under its icy surface.

Reanalyzing old data with our modern understanding seems to be in vogue lately. However, the implications of that reanalysis for some topics are more impactful than others. One of the most hotly debated topics of late in the astrobiological community has been whether or not life can exist on Venus - specifically in its cloud layers, some of which have some of the most Earth-like conditions anywhere in the solar system, at least in terms of pressure and temperature. A new paper from a team of American researchers have just added fuel to that debate by reanalyzing data from the Pioneer mission to Venus NASA launched in the 70s - and finding that the Venus’ clouds are primarily made out of water.

There are plenty of exoplanets scattered throughout the galaxy, so it would stand to reason there are also plenty of stars that are in the process of forming new exoplanets. Tracking down stars that are in different stages of that process can shed light on the exoplanet formation process, and potentially even on how planets in our own solar system developed. But determining what star systems are going through that process, let alone where they are in the process itself, can be tricky. A new paper in Nature Astronomy from Tomohiro Yoshida and his co-authors at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and several other Japanese and American research institutions, seems to have found one that finally answers a mystery that has stood in planetary formation theory for decades - how do gas giant exoplanets form so far away from their stars?

Astronomy is increasingly becoming an online affair. Recent discoveries of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and R2 SWAN highlighted this fact, when both were first discussed on message boards and verified via remote telescopes before confirmation. Another recent find also shows what’s possible, as devoted amateur astronomer Filipp Romanov accomplished an amazing feat, and discovered a supernova in a remote galaxy.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has a data scale problem. There are just too many places to look for an interstellar signal, and even if you’re looking in the right place you could be looking at the wrong frequency or at the wrong time. Several strategies have come up to deal narrow the search given this overabundance of data, and a new paper from Naoki Seto of the Kyoto University falls nicely into that category - by using the Brightest Of All TIme (BOAT) Gamma Ray Burst, with some help from our own galaxy.

Dark matter, as its name suggests, is really dark, so dark in fact that it doesn’t interact in any way with light or any other part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Even thought it makes up about 80 percent of all matter in the universe and plays a vital role in galaxy formation we still don’t really know what it is. Of all the methods and techniques used to try and unravel this mystery, never would I think I would be writing about the Moon and how it could help us. However, a new piece of research suggests that future missions to the far side of the Moon could help us determine the mass of individual dark matter particles.

Gamma ray bursts are among the most luminous explosions in the universe, briefly outshining entire galaxies in a violent flash of energy. For decades, scientists have debated what powers these incredibly powerful detonations and, to date, the leading candidates have been black holes or highly magnetised neutron stars called magnetars. Distinguishing between the two has proven frustratingly difficult though but a new study has just provided the clearest evidence yet that magnetars can indeed power some of these extreme events, and they did it by detecting something unexpected, the "heartbeat" of a newborn star.