Solar System News

December 19, 2025

Top Headlines

Japanese Spacecraft Faces a Massive Challenge from a House-size Asteroid

Nov. 21, 2025 New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s ...

JWST Captures Stunning 3D View of a Planet’s Scorching Atmosphere

Nov. 2, 2025 A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to create the first 3D atmospheric map of an exoplanet. The fiery WASP-18b, a massive “ultra-hot Jupiter,” revealed striking temperature contrasts, including regions so hot they destroy ...

The Universe’s First Radio Waves Could Reveal Dark Matter

Oct. 25, 2025 Researchers propose that hydrogen gas from the early Universe emitted detectable radio waves influenced by dark matter. Studying these signals, especially from the Moon’s radio-quiet environment, could reveal how dark matter clumped together ...

Harvard Astrophysicist Suggests Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be an Alien Probe

Oct. 15, 2025 3I/ATLAS, a mysterious interstellar object racing toward the Sun, is baffling scientists with its speed and origin. Some researchers suggest it could even be alien-made, drawing comparisons to probes ...

The Sun’s Hidden Poles Could Finally Reveal Its Greatest Secrets

Oct. 14, 2025 High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...

The Moon’s South Pole Hides a 4-billion-year-old Secret

Oct. 12, 2025 A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...

An Interstellar Visitor Lights Up the Red Planet’s Sky

Oct. 12, 2025 ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...

Scientists Stunned by Wild Martian Dust Devils Racing at Hurricane Speeds

Oct. 9, 2025 Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...

Hit the Wrong Spot and an Asteroid Returns on a Collision Course

Sep. 9, 2025 Scientists caution that asteroid deflection must be precise, as striking the wrong spot risks sending it through a gravitational keyhole that sets up a future collision with Earth. Using lessons from NASA’s DART mission, researchers are developing ...

A Record-breaking Antenna Just Deployed in Space. Here’s What It Will See

Aug. 18, 2025 NASA and ISRO s NISAR satellite has just reached a major milestone: the successful deployment of its enormous 39-foot antenna reflector in orbit. Folded up like an umbrella during launch, the reflector is now fully extended and ready to support ...

NASA’s PREFIRE Satellites Reveal a Secret Glow Escaping from Our Planet

Aug. 18, 2025 With its two tiny CubeSats, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is capturing invisible heat escaping from Earth, offering clues to how ice, clouds, and storms influence the climate system. The insights could lead to better weather forecasts and a deeper ...

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Just Learned How to Multitask

Aug. 14, 2025 Thirteen years after landing on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover is running smarter and more efficiently than ever. With new autonomy and multitasking capabilities, it’s maximizing the output from its long-lasting nuclear power source while ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:30am EST

A Hidden Star Found Where Dust Shouldn’t Exist

Dec. 17, 2025 A mysterious cloud of ultra-hot dust around Kappa Tucanae A may finally have an explanation: a hidden companion star. The star’s extreme orbit carries it straight through the dust zone, strongly ...

New Orbital Clue Reveals How Hot Jupiters Really Formed

Dec. 15, 2025 Hot Jupiters were once cosmic oddities, but unraveling how they moved so close to their stars has remained a stubborn mystery. Scientists have long debated whether these giants were violently flung ...

Webb Finds a Hidden Atmosphere on a Molten Super-Earth

Dec. 14, 2025 Webb’s latest observations reveal a hellish world cloaked in an unexpected atmosphere: TOI-561 b, an ultra-hot rocky planet racing around its star in under 11 hours. Despite being blasted by ...

A Nearby Earth-Size Planet Just Got Much More Mysterious

Dec. 12, 2025 TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early ...

Uranus and Neptune Are Hiding Something Big Beneath the Blue

Dec. 10, 2025 Uranus and Neptune may not be the icy worlds we’ve long imagined. A new Swiss-led study uses innovative hybrid modeling to reveal that these planets could just as easily be dominated by rock as by ...

James Webb Catches a Giant Helium Cloud Pouring Off a Puffy Planet

Dec. 10, 2025 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have captured dramatic helium streams pouring off the super-puff exoplanet WASP-107b, revealing a world with an enormously inflated, weakly bound ...

New Moonquake Discovery Could Change NASA’s Moon Plans

Dec. 7, 2025 Scientists have discovered that moonquakes, not meteoroids, are responsible for shifting terrain near the Apollo 17 landing site. Their analysis points to a still-active fault that has been ...

SPHERE’s Stunning Space Images Reveal Where New Planets Are Forming

Dec. 6, 2025 SPHERE’s detailed images of dusty rings around young stars offer a rare glimpse into the hidden machinery of planet formation. These bright arcs and faint clouds reveal where tiny planet-building ...

Astronomers Find a Planet Orbiting at a Wild Angle No One Can Explain

Dec. 4, 2025 A network of powerful ground-based telescopes captured rare starspot-crossing events on TOI-3884b, revealing cooler patches on the star’s surface and rapid changes tied to its rotation. By ...

The Solar Mission That Survived Disaster and Found 5,000 Comets

Dec. 3, 2025 For thirty years, SOHO has watched the Sun from a stable perch in space, revealing the inner workings of our star and surviving crises that nearly ended the mission. Its long-term observations ...

Scientists May Have Found the Planet That Made the Moon

Nov. 23, 2025 About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...

Massive Hidden Structures Deep Inside Earth May Explain How Life Began

Nov. 20, 2025 Scientists may finally be closing in on the origins of two colossal, mysterious structures buried nearly 1,800 miles inside Earth—hidden formations that have puzzled researchers for decades. New ...

New Mars Images Reveal Hidden Traces of a Recent Ice Age

Nov. 26, 2025 Mars’s Coloe Fossae reveals a landscape shaped by ancient ice ages, with deep valleys, cratered terrain, and frozen debris flows preserved from a time when the planet’s climate dramatically ...

Astronomers Unveil the Surprising Hidden Geometry of a Supernova

Nov. 16, 2025 Astronomers have, for the first time, recorded the moment a star’s explosion broke through its surface. The nearby supernova, SN 2024ggi, revealed a surprisingly olive-shaped blast when studied ...

Astronomers Discover Thousands of Hidden Siblings of the “Seven Sisters”

Nov. 16, 2025 The “Seven Sisters” have far more relatives than anyone imagined. Using NASA and ESA space telescopes, astronomers found thousands of hidden stars linked to the Pleiades, forming a colossal ...

Scientists Uncover a Massive Hidden Crater in China That Rewrites Earth’s Recent History

Nov. 14, 2025 A massive, well-preserved impact crater has been uncovered in Guangdong, revealing the signature of a powerful meteorite strike during the Holocene. Measuring 900 meters across, it dwarfs other known ...

Astronomers Spot a Rare Planet-Stripping Eruption on a Nearby Star

Nov. 14, 2025 Scientists have finally confirmed a powerful coronal mass ejection from another star, using LOFAR radio data paired with XMM-Newton’s X-ray insights. The eruption blasted into space at ...

Warm Ocean Beneath Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus May Be Perfect for Life

Nov. 9, 2025 NASA’s Cassini mission has revealed surprising heat flow at Enceladus’ north pole, showing the moon releases energy from both ends. This balance of heat could allow its subsurface ocean to remain ...

Extreme-Pressure Experiment Reveals a Strange New Ice Phase

Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers at KRISS observed water’s rapid freeze–melt cycles under ultrahigh pressure and discovered Ice XXI, the first new ice phase found in decades. Using advanced high-pressure tech and ...

Astronomers Discover Dying Stars Eating Their Planets

Nov. 6, 2025 Astronomers have discovered that aging stars may be devouring their closest giant planets as they swell into red giants. Using NASA’s TESS telescope to study nearly half a million stars, scientists ...

Those Halloween Fireballs Might Be More Dangerous Than You Think

Oct. 31, 2025 The Taurid meteor shower, born from Comet Encke, delights skywatchers but may conceal hidden risks. Research led by Mark Boslough examines potential Taurid swarms that could increase impact danger in ...

Astronomers Stunned by Three Earth-Sized Planets Orbiting Two Suns

Nov. 12, 2025 Scientists have identified three Earth-sized planets orbiting two stars in the TOI-2267 system. Remarkably, planets transit around both stars — a first in astronomy. The system’s compact, cold ...

Nearby Super-Earth Emerges as a Top Target in the Search for Life

Nov. 23, 2025 Researchers have pinpointed a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a nearby M-dwarf star only 18 light-years away. Sophisticated instruments detected the planet’s gentle tug on its star, hinting at ...

Nearby Super-Earth May Be Our Best Chance Yet to Find Alien Life

Nov. 13, 2025 A newly detected super-Earth just 20 light-years away is giving scientists one of the most promising chances yet to search for life beyond our solar system. The discovery of the exoplanet orbiting in ...

Jupiter’s Wild Youth May Have Reshaped the Entire Solar System

Nov. 13, 2025 Simulations reveal that Jupiter’s rapid growth disrupted the early solar system, creating rings where new planetesimals formed much later than expected. These late-forming bodies match the ages and ...

Saturn's Moon Titan Just Broke One of Chemistry’s Oldest Rules

Oct. 17, 2025 Scientists from NASA and Chalmers University have discovered that incompatible substances can mix on Titan’s icy surface, breaking the “like dissolves like” rule of chemistry. Under ultra-cold ...

MIT Finds Traces of a Lost World Deep Within Planet Earth

Oct. 17, 2025 Researchers have discovered chemical fingerprints of Earth's earliest incarnation, preserved in ancient mantle rocks. A unique imbalance in potassium isotopes points to remnants of “proto ...

Who or What Dug Mars’ Mysterious Gullies? The Answer Is Explosive

Oct. 16, 2025 CO₂ ice blocks on Mars may dig gullies as they slide and sublimate in the thin atmosphere. In lab experiments, scientists recreated these eerie, worm-like movements under Martian conditions. The ...

These Giant Planets Shouldn’t Exist. But They Do

Oct. 15, 2025 Astronomers are investigating a strange class of exoplanets known as eccentric warm Jupiters — massive gas giants that orbit their stars in unexpected, elongated paths. Unlike their close-orbiting ...

Tiny Asteroid Flew Right Over Antarctica, and No One Saw It Coming

Oct. 9, 2025 Asteroid 2025 TF zipped past Earth above Antarctica, coming within 428 km of the surface. Roughly the size of a small car, it was detected hours after the flyby and posed no danger. ESA astronomers ...