Space & Physics

An artist's rendering of the microblazar system.

AstronomySeptember 25, 2026

Scientists just found a bizarre cosmic object ‘hiding in plain sight’

Meet the Milky Way’s first microblazar

Mary Randolph

An artist's rendering of Juice and Jupiter

Space ExplorationSeptember 25, 2026

Jupiter-bound spacecraft Juice to fly by Earth Monday

To get to the outer solar system, the Juice spacecraft needs an assist from Earth’s gravity—and it’s going to be taking pictures along the way

Mary Randolph

New Issue: Science’s Impossible Questions. Read Now

An illustration of the Voyager spacecraft leaving the solar system. The spacecraft is in silhouette with the light from the distant sun shining through.

The UniverseSeptember 25, 2026

What’s the point of the interstellar Fermi Explorer mission?

Fermi Explorer, a proposed low-cost private mission to Alpha Centauri, seeks to address a question that’s already been answered

Phil Plait

An illustration of dark matter nebula with pink shades between the hands of adam's creation in marble sculpture

Particle PhysicsSeptember 25, 2026

Vox’s Unexplainable and Scientific American take on dark matter, uncertainty and the unknowable

What if the universe’s biggest mystery has no answer?

Rachel Feltman, Joseph Howlett, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

Space & PhysicsSeptember 23, 2026

See the Taurids light up the fall sky with brilliant shooting stars

Lasting from mid-September until mid-November, the Taurid meteor showers are among the longest of the year

Jackie Flynn Mogensen

An overhead, close-up view of McGetchin Crater that was taken on December 5, 2025, by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Space ExplorationSeptember 22, 2026

Scientists discover largest new impact crater in the solar system ever—on our moon

The crater, named after geologist and lunar surface expert Tom McGetchin, spans more than two football fields wide

Adam Kovac

Two bunnysuited engineers stand facing away from the camera in a large clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, gazing at flight hardware for the space agency's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Space ExplorationSeptember 22, 2026

After brutal cuts, can this NASA center still build multibillion-dollar space telescopes?

2025 was a brutal year of budget cuts and workforce attrition at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the home base for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Experts worry Goddard—and NASA’s space science—may never recover

Eric Niiler

An illustration of missile system and satellite in space

WarfareSeptember 21, 2026

U.S. space weapons, AI regulation debates and the EPA’s carbon emissions rollback

From orbital weapons to AI risks and weaker emissions rules

Rachel Feltman, Lee Billings, Fonda Mwangi, Alex Sugiura

This test image captures the very first photons of starlight to reach the Wide Field Instrument on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Space ExplorationSeptember 18, 2026

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope glimpses its first cosmic light

The space telescope is set to reveal thousands of new exoplanets and scour the universe for signs of dark matter and energy

Adam Kovac

An illustration of a fiery, semi-molten planetary surface with a red giant star looming large in the sky.

The UniverseSeptember 18, 2026

The life and death of the sun

Our sun is on a long, strange trip to its eventual demise. Here are the key stops along the way

Phil Plait

WarfareSeptember 15, 2026

It’s official: The U.S. has weapons in space

A high-ranking official announced yesterday that the U.S. military has deployed weapons into orbit to counter threats from Russia and China

Mary Randolph

Rows of copper tubes rise from a white panel punctuated with an array of circular indentations inside the XENONnT dark matter detector. Provided by XENON Collaboration.

Particle PhysicsSeptember 15, 2026

What if we never find dark matter?

Could the hunt for the universe’s missing matter be the biggest wild goose chase in scientific history?

Joseph Howlett