Space
US officials beginning to think the truth may really be out there
Three highly credentialed whistleblowers have testified to a US congressional hearing that UFOs are real and that the government is covering up the evidence.
- by Farrah Tomazin
Latest
Fireball that lit up Melbourne night sky was most likely debris from Russian rocket
The Australian Space Agency has shed more light on the fireball that streaked across the sky overnight and also caused a loud boom to be heard.
- by Lachlan Abbott
Fireball that lit up Melbourne night
A large flaming object that lit up Melbourne’s sky overnight is thought to be debris from a Russian rocket used to send a satellite into space.
‘Space for everyone’: Russia to launch first moon lander since 1976
Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft is on a timetable that implies it could match or narrowly beat its Indian rival to the moon’s surface.
- by Mark Trevelyan and Lidia Kelly
After mistakenly cutting contact, NASA detects ‘heartbeat’ signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft
The command, which tilted the spacecraft’s antenna away from Earth, severed its contact with NASA.
- by Marcia Dunn
Lunar Codex: A time capsule of human creativity to be stored on the moon
The director of a vast multimedia archive telling a story of the world’s people through creative arts says it’s “message in the bottle for the future”.
- by J.D. Biersdorfer
Interactive
Astronomy
Travel into Earth’s closest cloud complex with 50 newly born stars
NASA has released a close-up image of the closest star-forming region to Earth, called Rho Ophiuchi, which is about 390 light years away.
- by Angus Dalton
It came from outer space: ‘Rocket junk’ washed up on WA beach makes international headlines
Within an hour of the first media report on the unusual find, Reddit posters had already come up with a theory the object was a piece of space junk from an Indian rocket.
- by Heather McNeill and Cameron Myles
Black mathematician calculated orbits for Apollo moon landing
Granville was part of a small cadre of Black women involved in the space program celebrated in movie Hidden Figures.
From a lab to the moon: Growing plants in outer space
The plants will make the 300,000-kilometre journey in 2026, but there are a few challenges facing scientists before then.
- by Laura Chung
Analysis
Science
It appears time moved much more slowly at the dawn of the universe. Here’s why
In a galaxy far, far away, enormous black holes born at the beginning of our universe have much to tell us about the relationship between time and space.
- by Liam Mannix