Solar System News

August 14, 2026

Top Headlines

NASA’s Moon Base Is Taking Shape with 20+ Lunar Landings Planned

Aug. 11, 2026 NASA is assembling the foundations of a future Moon Base through a wave of robotic missions and powerful new commercial landers. More than 20 landings are planned through 2029, testing everything from precision landings and lunar communications to ...

The Key to Colonizing Mars May Be Hidden Inside Asteroids

Aug. 7, 2026 Metal-rich asteroids could one day become hardware stores for Mars, supplying the materials needed to build and repair a growing colony. A new analysis shows that carefully selected asteroids may be reachable with current spacecraft technology. Some ...

NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Aces Mars Flyby Capturing Stunning Timelapse Video

July 28, 2026 NASA’s Psyche spacecraft aced its Mars flyby, using the planet’s gravity to speed toward its 2029 encounter with a metal-rich asteroid. The spacecraft tested its cameras, magnetometer, and ...

NASA Will Test SpaceX and Blue Origin Moon Landers Before the Next Lunar Landing

July 23, 2026 NASA is preparing for future astronaut landings on the Moon with an unusually ambitious orbital rehearsal. During Artemis III in 2027, Orion astronauts will rendezvous and dock separately with ...

China’s Chang’e-6 Reveals Why Solar Wind Hits the Moon’s Two Sides Differently

July 21, 2026 China’s Chang’e-6 samples have uncovered a surprising difference between the Moon’s two hemispheres. Solar wind particles penetrated deeper into the far-side soil because Earth’s ...

Scientists Identify the Rare Meteorite That Killed the Dinosaurs 66 Million Years Ago

July 19, 2026 The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely an exceptionally rare CO chondrite from a distant region of the solar system. Its unusual chemistry suggests that planet-cooling dust and debris, ...

A Shattered Asteroid May Have Bombarded Earth 800 Million Years Ago

July 18, 2026 A catastrophic asteroid breakup may have triggered a huge wave of impacts across the inner solar system about 800 million years ago. The debris was launched from near a gravitational gateway controlled by Jupiter, sending fragments toward Earth, the ...

Terraforming Mars May Be More Realistic Than Scientists Once Thought

July 17, 2026 Scientists say new technologies have reopened the debate over whether Mars could someday be terraformed, turning a once impossible idea into a serious research topic. Before anyone tries to reshape the Red Planet, though, researchers say we must ...

NASA Selects 41 Space Technologies for Future Moon and Mars Exploration

July 15, 2026 NASA has chosen 41 commercial technology projects that could solve critical challenges for future missions to the Moon and Mars. From powering lunar outposts to protecting spacecraft from Moon dust, the innovations are designed to push both space ...

NASA's Perseverance Just Completed a Marathon on Mars

July 14, 2026 NASA's Perseverance rover has reached an impressive new milestone on Mars, completing the equivalent of a full marathon by driving 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) across the Red Planet. It accomplished the feat in just five years and four months, ...

NASA Selects Four New Moon Missions to Build a Permanent Lunar Base

July 14, 2026 NASA is ramping up its lunar ambitions by awarding nearly $600 million for four commercial Moon landings planned for late 2028. Each mission will carry the same trio of science instruments to improve lunar navigation, study dangerous dust kicked up ...

Europe Just Unveiled a New Rival to SpaceX’s Starship

July 10, 2026 A detailed independent study found that SpaceX's Starship is every bit as revolutionary as expected, while revealing both its impressive capabilities and its biggest remaining hurdles. It also introduces an ambitious European rocket concept that ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:45am EDT

Neptune’s Tiny Moons May Be the Wreckage of Shattered Ancient Worlds

Aug. 14, 2026 JWST has uncovered surprising clues that Neptune’s strange inner moons may be the wreckage of an ancient cosmic catastrophe. Researchers detected clay-like minerals on Larissa, Galatea, and ...

A Massive New Cosmic Map Is Revealing Black Holes, Rare Stars, and Hidden Gas

Aug. 14, 2026 Astronomers have released more than three million new spectra in a sweeping expansion that, for the first time, brings SDSS-V optical observations to ...

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Watches Earth Vanish from the Surface of Mars

Aug. 13, 2026 NASA’s Perseverance rover caught a striking first from Mars: Earth disappearing behind the tiny moon Phobos. Seen from nearly 195 million miles away, our planet was reduced to a single point of ...

James Webb Captures a Cosmic Lion Sculpted by a Dying Star

Aug. 12, 2026 James Webb has captured a striking new infrared view of NGC 2392, the Lion Nebula, revealing the dramatic aftermath of a dying Sun-like star. At its center, a scorching white dwarf is blasting ...

The Sun Will Vanish Over Europe in a Rare Total Solar Eclipse: Watch Live

Aug. 10, 2026 A total solar eclipse will plunge parts of Europe into darkness on August 12, 2026, with Spain offering some of the best views. ESA will livestream the spectacle from the Javalambre Observatory, ...

Cassini Reveals a Surprising Twist in Saturn’s Magnetic Shield

Aug. 10, 2026 Cassini data has revealed a surprising twist in Saturn’s magnetic shield: the planet’s rapid rotation appears to drag a key opening in its magnetosphere far toward the afternoon side instead of ...

Meteorite That Smashed Through a New Jersey Roof Reveals Clues to Life’s Origins

Aug. 8, 2026 A rare meteorite that crashed through a New Jersey roof contains evidence of ancient salty fluids, organic compounds, and amino acids from a ...

A Star’s Violent Death Exposed a Hidden Supermassive Black Hole

Aug. 6, 2026 A supermassive black hole has been found lurking about 30,000 light-years from the center of its galaxy—the first dormant black hole detected so far from a galactic core. It revealed itself only ...

A Solar Eclipse and the Perseid Meteor Shower Arrive on the Same Day

Aug. 5, 2026 August brings four major celestial events, including a solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Dark New Moon skies could make the Perseids especially impressive, while Venus will ...

Moonquakes Could Reveal Hidden Water Beneath the Lunar Surface

Aug. 3, 2026 Hidden moon ice may reveal itself through the way it bends and reflects vibrations from moonquakes. The technique could help astronauts locate vital water supplies and uncover clues about the origins ...

Giant Waves Are Sweeping Mars’ Atmosphere Into Space

Aug. 3, 2026 The solar wind may be stripping away Mars’ atmosphere by creating giant rolling waves along its outer edge. Data from MAVEN and Tianwen-1 show that these waves form plasma clouds that carry ...

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds a Mysterious Honeycomb Landscape on Mars

Aug. 1, 2026 NASA’s Curiosity rover has entered a Martian valley covered by an astonishing “sea” of tiny polygon-shaped fractures. The honeycomb patterns, each only a few inches wide, stretch across the ...

After 241 Days in Orbit This NASA Astronaut Is Finally Home

July 27, 2026 NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Roscosmos cosmonauts are back on Earth after spending 241 days aboard the International Space Station. Their journey covered more than 102 million miles and ...

Venus May Be Tearing Itself Apart from Within

July 24, 2026 Scientists have uncovered new evidence that Venus may still be tearing itself apart from within. Advanced 3D simulations indicate that some of the planet's giant rift valleys formed relatively ...

The Search for Life on Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa Just Got More Complicated

July 29, 2026 Europa’s hidden ocean has made the icy moon one of the solar system’s most promising places to search for habitable conditions. Scientists have hoped that water from this deep ocean might rise ...

Scientists Discover the Sun Contains 55% More Silver Than Expected

July 24, 2026 A new analysis suggests the Sun holds far more silver than earlier estimates indicated. More advanced models of the solar atmosphere raised the calculated amount by 55 percent, bringing it into much ...

Astronomers Find the First Atmosphere on a Rocky World in the Habitable Zone

July 21, 2026 Astronomers have found the first confirmed atmosphere around a rocky planet in another star’s habitable zone. The planet, LHS 1140 b, revealed its atmosphere through helium slowly leaking into ...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Discovers Giant Planet Hiding in One of Astronomy’s Most Famous Systems

July 23, 2026 A giant planet had been hiding inside one of astronomy’s most closely studied planetary systems, concealed by a bright disk of cosmic dust. Webb revealed Beta Pictoris d through atmospheric traces ...

NASA's Hubble Captures a Crimson Stellar Nursery Sparkling With Blue and White Stars

July 5, 2026 Hubble has captured a spectacular view of LH 95, where about 2,500 young stars are still on their journey to becoming full-fledged stars. Scientists discovered these growing stars can keep pulling in ...

NASA's Hubble Captures a Star-Spangled Sea of 500,000 Stars

July 4, 2026 Celebrating the United States' 250th anniversary, NASA released a stunning Hubble portrait of Messier 3, an ancient globular cluster with more than 500,000 stars. The remarkable cluster is ...

NASA Celebrates America's 250th Birthday With Incredible Views of Space

July 4, 2026 NASA is marking the United States' 250th birthday with four striking red, white, and blue images of deep space from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The collection features an exploded star, a ...

Astronomers Found Two Rare Super Puff Planets Lighter Than Cotton Candy

June 26, 2026 Two newly confirmed "super-puff" planets are so diffuse that they are less dense than cotton candy, despite being about the size of Jupiter. Their rare orbital relationship and enormous, ...

Scientists Want to Quarantine Alien Life on the Moon Before It Reaches Earth

July 6, 2026 Scientists are calling for a lunar quarantine facility where samples from Mars, the Moon, and beyond would be examined before being brought to Earth. They warn that even a tiny alien microorganism ...

This Mars Rover Could Finally Reveal Whether Life Ever Existed on Mars

July 9, 2026 The hunt for ancient life on Mars just got an important test run. Scientists confirmed that the Rosalind Franklin rover's sophisticated instrument can detect subtle differences in two stable ...

NASA’s Lucy Finds a Wobbling Peanut-Shaped Asteroid With Signs of Ancient Water

June 25, 2026 NASA’s Lucy spacecraft discovered that asteroid Donaldjohanson is a wobbling, peanut-shaped relic born from a violent collision and slowly reshaped by the subtle force of sunlight. It also carries ...

James Webb Uncovers Exotic Salt Clouds on a Mysterious Pink World

June 28, 2026 Astronomers have finally cracked the mystery of the famous “Pink Planet,” a strange world 57 light-years away that has puzzled scientists for more than a decade. Using the James Webb Space ...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Reveals a Strange Atmosphere on a Hellish Lava Planet

July 15, 2026 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed new details about the blistering lava planet 55 Cancri e, where temperatures are high enough to melt rock. The data indicate the planet likely has ...

Dying Sun-Like Stars May Kick Themselves Through Space

July 20, 2026 Dying Sun-like stars may not fade away quietly. As blobs of gas erupt unevenly from their swollen surfaces, each burst gives the star a tiny push in the opposite direction. Thousands of these random ...

Sun-Like Star Caught After Eating One of Its Own Planets

July 16, 2026 A distant Sun-like star appears to have devoured one of its planets, leaving behind a surprising chemical fingerprint. Researchers found an unusually high concentration of lithium, a strong sign that ...

Future Astronauts Could Walk Across Rocks from Deep Inside the Moon

June 22, 2026 A colossal ancient collision may have left some of the Moon’s deepest secrets surprisingly close to future Artemis landing sites. By recreating the impact that formed the giant South Pole-Aitken ...