ESA News

November 13, 2026

Top Headlines

A Massive New Simulation Reveals How the Universe Emerged from Darkness

Nov. 11, 2026 A groundbreaking new supercomputer simulation is revealing how the universe escaped its cosmic dark age and transformed into a cosmos filled with stars and galaxies. Called Lumina, it recreates 2 billion years of early cosmic history across a region ...

Astronomers Discover Hidden Alien Planet in James Webb Images

Nov. 10, 2026 A breakthrough in telescope imaging could reveal countless alien worlds that have been hiding in plain sight. Scientists developed a new technique that uses a digital twin of the James Webb Space Telescope to remove the overwhelming glare of stars, ...

NASA Offers $500,000 to Develop Next-generation Electric Rocket Engines

Nov. 9, 2026 NASA is putting $500,000 on the line in a new competition to accelerate the development of advanced electric rocket engines for satellites and future space exploration. The AMPERE Challenge will reward up to two U.S. companies with cash prizes and ...

Caltech Robot Makes History by Building a Structure in Space

Nov. 9, 2026 For the first time, a robot has autonomously built part of a structure in space, demonstrating a breakthrough that could fundamentally change space exploration. The technology could one day allow scientists to construct enormous telescopes, ...

NASA Reveals Bold New Plan to Return Astronauts to the Moon in 2028

Nov. 9, 2026 NASA has revealed an accelerated plan to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028, with SpaceX and Blue Origin developing competing lunar landers and a crucial orbital test scheduled for 2027. Faster rocket preparations, new lightweight spacesuits, and ...

NASA Is Racing Against Time to Save the Hubble Space Telescope

Nov. 4, 2026 NASA is exploring a daring plan to save the legendary Hubble Space Telescope from its eventual fiery plunge into Earth's atmosphere. After more than 35 years of groundbreaking discoveries, Hubble is slowly losing altitude, and without intervention, ...

NASA Smashed Into an Asteroid. Now Hera Is Closing in to See What Happened

Nov. 3, 2026 Europe’s Hera spacecraft has captured its first clear view of two asteroids involved in NASA’s historic 2022 experiment to redirect a potentially dangerous space rock. Now approaching the pair, Hera will investigate the mysterious aftermath of ...

NASA’s Voyager 1 Is About to Reach a Historic One-light-day Milestone

Nov. 3, 2026 NASA’s Voyager 1 is approaching an extraordinary milestone nearly 50 years after its launch, even as engineers battle dwindling power and mysterious technical problems. A clever energy-saving maneuver has extended the spacecraft’s scientific ...

NASA’s Artemis I Mission Reveals Surprising Radiation Levels Near the Moon

Oct. 28, 2026 NASA’s Artemis I mission has revealed that cosmic radiation near the Moon is higher than in Earth orbit, but not by as much as scientists might expect. Tiny experimental detectors also uncovered ...

A Train Was Delayed by a Solar Storm. but Something Didn't Add Up.

Oct. 21, 2026 Scientists have cracked a 178-year-old mystery surrounding a train delayed by a solar storm, revealing that the famous incident happened in 1848 rather than 1841. The discovery rewrites the early history of space weather and highlights a threat that ...

Astronauts’ Hearts Just Passed a Surprising Test for Mars

Oct. 21, 2026 A new study tracking 13 astronauts suggests that the human heart may be surprisingly well equipped for a journey to Mars, especially with regular exercise during spaceflight. Researchers found that astronauts' hearts adapted to months of ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Exceeds Expectations by Nearly 30%

Oct. 17, 2026 NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has exceeded expectations after engineers made incredibly tiny adjustments to sharpen its view of the universe. By moving a mirror just one-sixteenth the width of a human hair, the team helped bring its ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:04am EST

The Sun Unleashed a Monster Storm. Earth May Have Made It Worse

Nov. 13, 2026 The massive solar storm that illuminated skies worldwide in May 2024 has uncovered an unexpected twist: Earth's own atmosphere may have helped make the storm so powerful. Satellite measurements ...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Discovers a Hidden Pattern in the Sun’s Chaotic Magnetic Fields

Nov. 11, 2026 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has revealed a surprising secret hidden within the chaos of space: turbulent magnetic fields reverse their direction of ...

A Mysterious 93-Billion-Mile Cosmic Structure May Be the Wreckage of Colliding Worlds

Nov. 10, 2026 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed surprising new details about a mysterious, 93-billion-mile-long cloud of dark, fluffy dust that may have ...

Comets May Have Destroyed Life's Ingredients Instead of Delivering Them to Earth

Nov. 10, 2026 A century-old theory about the origins of life on Earth may be wrong. New research from the University of Cambridge suggests that comets traveled too ...

Einstein's Equations Reveal How Gravity Could Break, Reconnect, and Release Energy

Nov. 8, 2026 More than a century after Einstein revolutionized our understanding of gravity, scientists have uncovered a surprising new phenomenon hidden within ...

Mysterious Gas Leaks Suggest Mars May Still Be Volcanically Alive

Nov. 7, 2026 Mysterious gas emissions and fresh volcanic fissures suggest that Mars may not be geologically dead after all, with hot magma potentially still active deep underground. The discovery could point to ...

Don't Miss: Meteor Showers, Fireballs, and a Supermoon Light Up November's Night Sky

Nov. 6, 2026 November's night sky is packed with celestial wonders, from bright meteor fireballs and a close pairing of Mars and Jupiter to a spectacular ...

All 5 Genetic “letters” of DNA and RNA Discovered in a 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Asteroid

Nov. 3, 2026 Scientists have discovered all five essential nucleobases used in DNA and RNA in pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu, revealing that key ingredients ...

Hubble Reveals a Stunning Twist in How the Universe Emerged from Darkness

Oct. 30, 2026 A surprising discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope is challenging a leading explanation for how the early universe emerged from a dense fog of hydrogen roughly 13 billion years ...

Astronauts Just Gave the International Space Station a Powerful Upgrade

Oct. 30, 2026 Two astronauts completed a 7-hour, 11-minute spacewalk to install a new solar array on the International Space Station, bringing NASA one step closer to a major power upgrade. Once the final array is ...

Smithsonian Scientists Just Recreated the First 2 Billion Years of the Universe

Oct. 27, 2026 Scientists have created one of the largest and most detailed simulations of the early universe ever made, offering an extraordinary new glimpse into the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang. Called ...

SpaceX Just Delivered Some Very Strange Cargo to the International Space Station

Oct. 16, 2026 SpaceX just delivered some surprisingly strange cargo to the International Space Station, including tiny brain models, 3D heart tissue, and technology for making artificial retinas in space. ...

NASA’s SpaceX Launch Lights Up the Sky With a Giant Glowing Jellyfish

Oct. 17, 2026 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket created a dazzling, jellyfish-shaped glow across the eastern United States as sunlight illuminated its exhaust during an early morning launch. The mission delivered equipment ...

Europe's New Sentinel-3C Satellite Just Sent Back Spectacular Images of Earth

Oct. 12, 2026 Europe's Sentinel-3C satellite has returned breathtaking images of Earth just two weeks after launch, revealing the snowy Alps, frozen Arctic islands, and brilliant turquoise Caribbean waters. ...

NASA Astronauts Splash Down After 100 Million Miles in Space

Oct. 8, 2026 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 astronauts have returned to Earth after 237 days in space, traveling more than 100 million miles and completing over 3,792 orbits while conducting research to prepare for ...

This Mysterious Hole on the Moon May Open Into a Giant Cave

Oct. 5, 2026 NASA has selected the GIMLI project to investigate whether the Marius Hill Pit opens into a vast underground cave or lava tube. Using radar, seismic sensors, gravity measurements, and cameras, ...

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Mars-Sized Worlds Smashing Together

Oct. 7, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the kinds of violent collisions that may have shaped our own solar system, including the giant impact thought to have created ...

NASA Is Searching for Hidden Caves to Build Its First Moon Base

Oct. 8, 2026 NASA is preparing for humanity’s first Moon base with three investigations that will hunt for underground shelters, uncover hidden ice, and track dangerous conditions on the lunar surface. The ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Just Opened Its Planet-Hunting Eye

Oct. 2, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has demonstrated remarkable pointing stability and given its powerful planet-imaging coronagraph its first look at the cosmos. The telescope can already stay locked on ...

A Record-Breaking X-Ray Flash May Reveal the Birth of a Magnetar

Sep. 30, 2026 Astronomers have found strong evidence that some mysterious, minutes-long X-ray flashes are produced when two neutron stars collide and create a magnetar. One record-setting event glowed in X-rays ...

Scientists Find a Surprising Clue to Why the Universe’s Expansion Doesn’t Add Up

Oct. 4, 2026 Tiny magnetic fields created shortly after the Big Bang may help explain the long-running disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding. Detailed simulations show that these primordial fields ...

Watch Live: NASA’s Crew-13 Could Make the Fastest U.S. Trip to the ISS Ever

Sep. 30, 2026 NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission is scheduled to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on October 1. The Dragon could reach the orbiting laboratory in just 7 hours and 50 minutes, ...

ESA’s Juice Just Used Earth as a Slingshot to Jupiter

Oct. 3, 2026 ESA’s Juice spacecraft raced past Earth on September 28, using our planet’s gravity to dramatically reshape its path toward Jupiter without burning much fuel. The flyby changed its direction by ...

The Early Universe Wasn’t Nearly as Pristine as Scientists Thought

Oct. 2, 2026 JWST has revealed that galaxies were spreading carbon, oxygen, and other heavy elements through space just 500 million years after the Big Bang. The surprising discovery suggests the young universe ...

NASA’s Crew-13 Could Go from Florida to the ISS in Under 9 Hours

Sep. 29, 2026 NASA and SpaceX could launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on October 1, with the Dragon spacecraft reaching orbiting outpost less than nine hours after liftoff. Crew-13 will ...

These Massive Stars Could Explain Webb’s Strangest Galaxies

Sep. 24, 2026 Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low ...

Astronomers Discover a Strange Universal Rule Behind Black Hole Eruptions

Oct. 16, 2026 Scientists have discovered that black holes of vastly different sizes appear to launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. The breakthrough could explain why some black holes suddenly ...

The LHC Just Ruled out Another Hiding Place for Quantum Black Holes

Sep. 22, 2026 Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics ...

NASA Just Powered Up Roman’s Massive 300-Megapixel Camera

Sep. 21, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has successfully activated its 300-megapixel infrared camera, which will capture enormous stretches of the cosmos with Hubble-like sharpness. Its planet-hunting ...

NASA Reveals 16 Stunning Galaxies Hiding Cosmic Chaos

Oct. 20, 2026 NASA's stunning new gallery of 16 galaxies reveals colossal black hole jets, explosive star formation, and spectacular cosmic collisions through the combined power of Chandra, James Webb, ...