Solar system

The flare may have been accompanied by a plasma eruption now headed toward Earth

Ice crystals suspended in the air put on a gorgeous show if you know when and where to look

Molecules in Enceladus’s icy plumes suggest that alien life could exist in our solar system

Mars Sample Return has always been an expensive, high-risk, high-reward project. But now, with realization of the mission’s actual cost and expanding timeline, Congress must commit to fully supporting the effort or risk tanking the rest of NASA’s planetary science program

A brain drain from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could pose problems for the space agency’s ambitious science plans

Establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future makes little sense. The weakest reason for doing it is also the strongest—and not in a good way

A strong geomagnetic storm is expected to hit Earth after several outbursts from the sun merged into one large blob of plasma

Six “sub-Neptune” worlds locked in a delicate dance around a nearby star offer fresh insights for the orbital evolution of planetary systems

The Xuntian Space Telescope is China’s entry in a global race to unlock the secrets of dark energy, and it will now lift off no earlier than mid-2025

The International Space Station—larger than a football field and weighing almost 450 tons—must eventually fall to Earth. It’s a delicate, dangerous process

SpaceX’s Starship—the most powerful rocket ever built—experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” in its otherwise successful second full-scale launch, triggering a federal investigation into what went wrong

The best-yet map of active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io hints at a hidden magma ocean—and more