On 19 and 20 August, the JUICE mission will make the first ever attempt to get a gravitational boost from both Earth and the moon on its way to Jupiter

Researchers recently found a possible reservoir of liquid water more than 11 kilometres below Mars's surface – the latest in a long series of potential water discoveries on the Red Planet, hinting at its temperate past

Mars rocks that were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet millions of years ago have been traced back to craters where they originated, which could transform our understanding of Mars’s volcanism and evolution

After a star explodes, the resulting supernova remnant collapses in on itself and could begin the cycle again, creating generations of stars enriched with heavy elements

Astronomers have identified patterns within the motion of stars stretching across the Milky Way, hinting at the presence of a vast wave

The Milky Way may be home to strange black holes from the first moments of the universe, and the best candidates are the three closest black holes to Earth

Past observations have indicated that the icy moon of Jupiter has a vast subsurface ocean. Launching in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper will go there in search of evidence that it could support life

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted six strange worlds the size of planets that formed like stars – and the smallest may be building its own miniature solar system

Brown dwarfs could be hiding dark matter inside their cores – if they are, there would be signs that could help us track it down

A chance to observe the high-speed re-entry of a falling satellite will give researchers important insights on how debris burns up in our atmosphere

‘Little red dot’ galaxies seen by JWST appear to be much more tightly packed with stars than other galaxies, raising big questions about how they came to be this way

NASA is investigating a strange noise coming through the speaker on Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which has been beset with technical issues

Space missions are extremely hard. Things going wrong should be expected, so having a sensible plan B is crucial

A newly spotted asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere over the South Pacific, creating a spectacular bright flash in the sky over the Philippines just hours after first being detected

News of the asteroid 2024 RW1 impacting near the Philippines may have come as a shock this week, but space agencies and astronomers around the world are keeping an eye out to protect us

Greg Eghigian's After the Flying Saucers Came and Luis Elizondo's Imminent both show how our fascination with UFOs goes beyond simple curiosity

Four private astronauts are riding a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule further from Earth than any human since 1972, where they will attempt the first ever civilian spacewalk

Five satellites due to launch this week could be brighter than most stars, and astronomers fear the growth of such constellations could have a catastrophic impact

In between two spacecraft visiting Jupiter’s moon Io, a volcano spreading material over hundreds of kilometres has appeared

Gas bubbles on the surface of a star have been observed for the first time in detail outside our solar system, and they are 75 times the size of our sun

If you were standing on Mars as it was hit by charged particles from the sun, you might be able to see an aurora just like on Earth

The long-standing mystery of how supermassive black holes grew so huge so quickly could be solved by decaying dark matter

The second-closest planet to the sun is more geologically active than we thought and could have more than 17,000 venusquakes a year

Spanning 23 million light years, or 220 Milky Way galaxies, a set of giant, newly discovered black hole jets known as Porphyrion may change our understanding of black holes and the structure of the universe

Exoplanets in binary star systems usually orbit both stars, but astronomers have now spotted three planets orbiting one or the other star in a pair

See the world's best space images from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024 award

Nearly imperceptible quantum flickers used to limit how precisely we could detect the way space-time ripples, but squeezing the laser light used in detectors overcomes this and doubles the number of gravitational waves we can see

Genetic analysis shows that microbes growing inside the International Space Station have adaptations for radiation and low gravity, and may pose a threat to astronauts

A distant planet should have been consumed when its star expanded to become a red giant, perhaps offering insights into planetary migration

Astronomers listened for radio signals emanating from planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, but found no evidence of any interplanetary communications

Astronomer Jo Dunkley is planning to use the Simons Observatory to snare evidence for inflation, the theory that the universe expanded at incredible speed after its birth

Astronomers have detected an exoplanet around Barnard’s star, one of the sun’s closest neighbours, but it is too hot for liquid water or life

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

How did the supermassive black holes we’re now seeing in the early universe get so big so fast? Astrophysicist Sophie Koudmani is using sophisticated galaxy simulations to figure it out

A detector on the International Space Station found signatures of unexpectedly abundant antimatter – which may have been created in clashes of dark matter particles

The ion tail of C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) could appear as a blue streak across the northern hemisphere sky during October, in a rare event thought to happen only every few decades

A 6000-kilogram spacecraft will embark on a six-year journey to Jupiter to explore whether its icy moon Europa has the conditions to support life

The Euclid space telescope's massive “cosmic atlas” promises to shed light on fundamental questions in physics and cosmology

The first “failed star” ever discovered has been a weird outlier since it was found nearly 30 years ago. New observations show that it is unusually massive because it isn’t a single star after all

General relativity teaches us that observing a black hole is all a question of perspective – and technique, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots

Averting an asteroid strike will need many of the same skills we must hone to tackle climate change and future pandemics

Dangerous radiation reaches Mars at levels we aren't exposed to on Earth, which makes the Red Planet a particularly dangerous place to be during pregnancy

You might have heard about plans to establish a self‑sustaining city on Mars. Here’s what life would really be like on the Red Planet

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

A Spot robot equipped with a blowtorch can locate weeds on farms and precisely heat them up to stop them growing, offering a possible alternative to herbicides

Anil Ananthaswamy's Why Machines Learn: The elegant maths behind modern AI explores the mechanics of the AI revolution, but doesn't examine its ethics