Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

The Evolving Enigma of Dark Energy and the Sun's Mysterious Past

An Australian-led team has rebuilt thirty years of supernova observations into one consistent catalogue — and it adds fresh weight to the idea that dark energy is not con

The Planet That Keeps Shrinking plus the Weekend Wrap

Today's episode — The Weekend Wrap, Saturday 12 September 2026: OUR LEAD: A SMALLER MERCURY Mercury has been contracting for four and a half billion years as its huge iro

Half the Neutron Stars

Today's episode — S05E191, Friday September 11, 2026: Main story: A population-synthesis study published in Nature Astronomy on 10 September argues that magnetars make up

A Hundred and Nine Flashes

Today's episode — S05E190, Thursday September 10, 2026: Main story: 109 fast radio bursts have been used to measure how much galactic feedback has smoothed out the matter

The Smallest Things Remember

Everything beyond Neptune is a leftover. The icy bodies of the Kuiper Belt never got assembled into a planet, and out there — dark, cold and empty enough that things most

The Moon in Five Hours

For fifty years the story has been that the Moon assembled slowly out of a disc of debris. New simulations from Southwest Research Institute add one thing everybody left

Europe Launches From Europe — And Two White Dwarfs Six Minutes Apart

A German rocket lifted off from an Arctic island on Saturday and became the first vehicle ever to reach orbit from Western European soil. Plus: the gaps in stellar stream

The Hydrogen Map: How a Radio Telescope Heard Half the Universe

Anna and Avery open the Weekend Wrap with a genuine first: South Africa's MeerKAT has detected the 21-centimetre hydrogen signal from four to five billion light years awa

One Flash in the Xenon: The Dark Matter Event Nobody Can Explain

Links & sources Brown University — LZ experiment sees surprising result in search for dark matter — https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-09-01/lz-dark-matter-results US Depart

BepiColombo Lets Go: Eight Years, Nine Flybys, One Irreversible Moment

Anna and Avery cover BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury beginning today, as the ESA/JAXA mission jettisons the transfer module that has carried it for nearly eight years an

There's Something Molten Under Mars's South Pole

Today's episode — S05E183, Wednesday September 2, 2026: Main story: A thermal anomaly beneath Mars's south pole. Writing in Nature on August 27, a team led by Alexander B

Catching the Uncatchable: Starship's Boldest Test Yet

Today's episode — S05E182, Tuesday September 1, 2026: Main story: SpaceX cleared Booster 21's static fire at Starbase's Pad 2 on August 30, the last major milestone befor

Roman Launches: A Telescope's Countdown Ends

🚀 The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is safely away — Anna and Avery recap Sunday's clean Falcon Heavy launch, what happens next on the road to L2, and a surprise Aust

The Weekend Wrap, August 29: Roman's Countdown Begins

Today's episode — S05E180, Saturday August 29, 2026, The Weekend Wrap: Main story: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches tomorrow, Sunday August 30, with a prima

Forty Times Brighter Than the Full Moon: Inside the Space-Mirror Fight

Today's episode — S05E179, Friday August 28, 2026:   Feature story: US startup Reflect Orbital has FCC approval for Eärendil-1, a demonstration satellite carrying a 60-fo

Diamond Rain, Decoded: Twenty Years of Disagreement, Solved

Today's episode — S05E178, Thursday August 27, 2026: Feature story: Physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Marius Millot, used the Omega Laser Facil

Betelgeuse, Up Close: A Star's Boiling Skin, Revealed

Today's episode — S05E177, Wednesday August 26, 2026: Feature story: Astronomers using the ALMA array in Chile, led by Bill Dent (European Southern Observatory), have rel

NASA's Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Fly — Nine Months Early

Today's episode — S05E176, Tuesday August 25, 2026: Feature story: NASA's Roman Space Telescope is fully encapsulated inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and cleared to launc

China Delays Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

Today's episode — S05E175, Monday August 24, 2026: Main story: China delays Chang'e-7's launch by about a month. The Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission's launch window op

China's About to Attempt the Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

Anna and Avery cover China's Chang'e-7 mission — a four-vehicle lunar south pole expedition, including a leaping hopper robot, that a Brown University scientist calls the