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

A faint glow from all of the galaxies that have ever existed fills the cosmos, and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has made the best measurement ever of just how faint it is

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

Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, is expected to grace our skies from mid-October. Abigail Beall is hoping for a dazzling display

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

A groundbreaking civilian spacewalk saw two astronauts partially exit a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule wearing a brand new design of spacesuit. Every previous spacewalk completed before this was performed by government-trained astronauts.

Using images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have created a cloud atlas of Mars, to better understand the climate of the Red Planet

The Cassini mission’s samples from Saturn’s moon Enceladus have signs of various organic molecules that could be among the ingredients needed for life to get started

The success of the all-civilian spacewalk on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission shows that private space flight is starting to catch up with government space agencies

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

As the space industry evolves, we need a new set of international regulations to decide who is responsible for safety, the number of satellites in space, and more

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

Medically evacuating an astronaut from space is difficult and expensive, and a new model predicts that one in three long-duration moon missions may require it

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

These dazzling images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are from the upcoming book Cosmos: Explore the wonders of the universe, which has a foreword by astrophysicist Becky Smethurst

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

Cracks running through samples of asteroid Ryugu were probably formed by the repeated thawing and freezing of water inside it, which could have helped asteroids like this carry the building blocks of life to early Earth

A computer simulation suggests that some collisions between exotic, hypothetical stars would make space-time ripple with detectable waves

The first 18 satellites of a planned Chinese mega constellation are brighter than all but 500 stars in the sky, raising fears of a huge impact on astronomy

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

Andrew McConnell's otherworldly photograph captures a Russian cosmonaut in front of the just-landed Soyuz MS spacecraft in Kazakhstan's remote grasslands

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

The European Space Agency is sending a probe to get a closer look at the asteroid Dimorphos, which had its orbit altered by NASA’s DART mission in 2022

Bacteria grown from carbon compounds in asteroids could be turned into a kind of nutritionally balanced milkshake

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 European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft must be thoroughly tested before being sent to investigate the aftermath of the collision of NASA's DART probe with Dimorphos

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

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

SpaceX claims the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket will happen “within days”, but the Federal Aviation Administration has not yet approved the launch

My first sight of Saturn through a telescope inspired my love of space. Dig out your telescopes or visit your local astronomy club, and you may be lucky enough to spot our sixth planet's stunning thick band of rings, says Leah Crane

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

Meet NASA’s NEO Surveyor, the space telescope identifying hazardous asteroids and comets within 48 million kilometres of Earth’s orbit

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

Moin Hussain's debut feature film Sky Peals sees a man discover his father may be from outer space. Part sci-fi, part family drama, part coming-of-age tale, it is odd and otherworldly

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