Space Exploration

In this news roundup, we cover outbreak updates, microbes in space and a brain turned to glass.

After its successful lunar touchdown, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission could soon be joined on the moon by two more commercial spacecraft

Whether aliens could detect our modern civilization depends on what signs they’re looking for—and, crucially, their distance from us

The overly sterile environment of the International Space Station is missing important microbes, a new detailed map shows. If we want to live off Earth, we may need to take more of our bacterial friends with us

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander is planned to touch down near the moon's south pole on or around March 6

Several companies have contracts with NASA to design private space habitats to replace the International Space Station once it’s gone

We look back on about 11 years of the Gaia spacecraft, now at the end of its mission to create the best map of the Milky Way.

Space scientists within NASA and outside it feel betrayed by the Trump administration’s changes at the agency, which was known for promoting inclusion in science

In partnership with NASA, the Intuitive Machines lander Athena will send a water-seeking drill, a pogo-sticking crater probe and other novel technologies to the moon

Could tiny swimming microbes help us unlock the mysteries of extraterrestrial life?

Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

A newly confirmed exoplanet around a nearby sunlike star might be astronomers’ best chance yet to look for life beyond the solar system—but it’s still no place like home