Secrets of the Moon’s Permanent Shadows Are Coming to Light
Robots will venture into the sunless depths of lunar craters to find ancient water ice, while studies find hints about how water arrives on rocky worlds.
Need to Test a Space Suit? Head to Iceland
The country’s unearthly landscapes have caught the attention of scientists planning for future missions to Mars and the moon.
A Failed Star Called ‘The Accident’ Puzzles Astronomers
The brown dwarf isn’t a star and it’s not a planet. But it’s illuminating the murky borderlands that separate the two.
What Causes Gamma-Ray Bursts? Their ‘Afterglows’ Hold Clues
These high-energy explosions, brighter than billions and billions of suns, have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.
A New Kind of Space Explosion Reveals the Birth of a Black Hole
A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out.
Don’t Tell Einstein, but Black Holes Might Have ‘Hair’
The general theory of relativity states that black holes have only three observable properties; additional ones, or “hair,” do not exist. Or do they?