Lisa Grossman

If successful, Morning Star would be the first private mission to another planet and the first in over 30 years to directly measure Venus’s clouds.

The disc of plasma surrounding the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is constantly emitting flares both large and small.

Firefly Aerospace landed a craft safely last week, a first for a private company. But Intuitive Machines’ mission ended when its lander wound up on its side in a crater.

The privately-owned lander turned its cameras toward Earth as our planet cast its shadow over the moon. It’s not the first spacecraft to do so.

Cosmic microwave background data support cosmology’s standard model but retain a mystery about the universe’s expansion rate.

The galaxy, called JADES-GS-z13-1, marks the earliest sign yet spotted of the era of cosmic reionization at 330 million years after the Big Bang.

Some of the unusual rocks carry stories about water on Mars. One has hints of long-gone microbes. All tell of a dynamic, complex planet.

The Curiosity rover identified hidden caches of the mineral siderite, which could help explain why Mars lost its habitable climate.

Kosmos 482 launched for Venus in 1972 but never left Earth orbit. The spacecraft has now lost enough energy that it can’t fight gravity anymore.

Sporting the world’s largest digital camera, the new telescope is poised to help solve some of the universe’s biggest mysteries.