Earth’s atmosphere thankfully provides air for us to breathe, but when trying to study interesting objects in space it causes all sorts of problems, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

A private satellite that is low on fuel could survive five more years because another satellite has come to its rescue – a technique that could be used by future service spacecraft

A space flight start-up called Astra is about to attempt to launch two small rockets into orbit over a few weeks to win $12 million from the US military

A huge black hole in a distant galaxy caused the largest explosion we have ever seen, with the energy of 10 billion suns – and it isn't clear why it was so big

White dwarf stars are common in the galaxy, but astronomers have found one that doesn't seem to obey the rules. They think it was born when two smaller white dwarfs merged together

A team of researchers say they have discovered a protein molecule inside a meteorite, the first extraterrestrial example ever found, but others are sceptical

Out of 28,000 suggestions, NASA selected the name Perseverance for its Mars 2020 rover, which will search for signs of life on the Red Planet

SpaceX is partnering with a US start-up called Axiom Space to launch three space tourists on a 10-day trip to the International Space Station

Lettuce grown on the International Space Station has been served with tacos and cheeseburgers, and it turns out to be just as nutritious as the Earth-grown version

In the early universe, particles called neutrinos had a starring role in determining where galaxy clusters formed and which elements were created when stars exploded

A huge black hole from when the universe was less than a billion years old is shooting a powerful jet at Earth, and studying it could help us understand the young cosmos

A leading theory for the formation of the moon is that a planet called Theia smashed into the early Earth, but doubts remain. Now a new analysis of lunar rock supports this idea

Our images of deep space are spectacular, but don’t reflect what our eyes would see. Here's what their stunning true colours reveal about the cosmos

Exoplanet WASP-76b, which is about 390 light years from the solar system, has a strange iron signature in its atmosphere, suggesting the metal is raining down on the planet's night side

The ExoMars mission, a joint venture between the European and Russian space agencies, will be delayed for two years. It has already been plagued by issues and the coronavirus hasn't helped

Proxima Centauri b, a planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbour, is being blasted with cosmic rays and solar flares – which could make it warm enough to host life

The Rosetta spacecraft’s measurements of comet 67P have revealed a hidden source of nitrogen that may help us learn how giant planets – and even life – formed

When Mars was young, parts of the planet may have been able to sustain RNA, a molecule that probably played a key role in the beginnings of life on Earth

Venus’s surface is covered in strange wiggling lines that may form when colossal stacks of lava are carved by gentle winds over hundreds of millions of years

The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft bombed the asteroid Ryugu in April. Analysing the crater it left behind suggests Ryugu is a relative youngster at 9 million years old

The first-ever interstellar comet is showing signs of brightening, suggesting it may have been heated up as it passed near to the sun

Could life on Mars have hidden from extreme weather in a cavern on the Pavonis Mons volcano? This 2011 orbiter image of an otherworldly crater has NASA asking just that

A tiny meteorite found in Antarctica doesn’t match any asteroid or comet we know of. Instead, it must have come from a mystery parent body that’s full of water

Our measurements of the Hubble constant can't seem to come up with a consistent answer. What we learn next may alter our view of the cosmos, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Pluto’s ancient oceans may have come about just after the icy world was born, melting from ice in a process that suggests the dwarf planet took just 30,000 years to form

When Earth and Venus formed, they both had global magma oceans deep underground. Earth’s has turned solid by now, but Venus’s may still remain hidden

Some black holes are way bigger than we can explain, and they may have come from supermassive stars that formed by devouring the other stars around them

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered that hydrogen dominates our universe, finally gets the recognition she deserves in a rich biography, What Stars Are Made Of

An unusually round and symmetrical deposit on Mars may be the result of an impact that popped the surface of the planet, causing a volcanic eruption less than 200,000 years ago

Thousands of dead satellites and chunks of debris in orbit are a threat to active satellites, but rockets that launch clouds of talcum powder may prevent a disastrous collision

Strange particles observed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down

An enormous rocky planet orbiting a distant star may be a gas giant that has had its atmosphere ripped off, which could help us understand how huge worlds like Jupiter form

Brown dwarfs, which are halfway between huge planets and small stars, have extremely powerful winds whipping around them at speeds of about 650 metres per second

An explosion 4.6 billion light years away has released 10 times more energy than the sun will put out in its lifetime, making it the most extreme supernova ever found

Spending at least six months in microgravity can cause astronauts’ brain volumes to increase, causing pressure to build up in their heads and creating vision problems

A star that swoops close to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole has a strange, looping orbit that proves Einstein was right about the gravity of black holes

Arrokoth, a strange two-lobed space rock, was hit by another rock at some point – the collision may have snapped Arrokoth’s narrow neck before it reformed again

The interstellar comet Borisov, which flew past Earth in December, is full of carbon monoxide ice that implies its home star is smaller and colder than our sun

Mars could have had an ancient ocean in its northern hemisphere, and a large raft of volcanic rock may have floated across it to settle into mounds we can see today

Strange orbits of distant space rocks have been used to infer that the solar system has an unseen ninth planet, but those orbits may be less strange than we thought, meaning there is no need for a new planet

Faraway galaxies have been spotted unexpectedly flashing up to 100 times their usual brightness, and it seems to be caused by eddies in Earth’s atmosphere

We know that there is at least one planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system, and now astronomers may have taken the first picture of a second world

The coronavirus pandemic is making life feel slower than ever, but observing timescales across the universe can bring us some comfort, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

A bunch of asteroids near Jupiter and Neptune with orbits perpendicular to the plane of the solar system may have come here from a different star system

Extraterrestrial oceans are an obvious place to search for alien life, but getting there and having a look won't be easy, says NASA's Kevin Hand in his book Alien Oceans

New images reveal threads of ultra-hot gas woven throughout the sun's corona, in the most detailed look at previously unseen parts of the atmosphere of our closest star

The question of how the brain gives rise to subjective experience is the hardest of all. Mathematicians think they can help, but their first attempts have thrown up some eye-popping conclusions

NASA has awarded $967 million to three space flight companies – Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX – to build lunar landers that will be part of the Artemis programme to send humans to the moon by 2024

Stars that are similar to the sun in every way we can measure are mostly more active than the sun, which hints that the sun’s activity may ramp up someday, risking solar eruptions

Weird blasts of radio waves from space called fast radio bursts have been baffling astronomers since they were discovered, but after finding one in our galaxy we may finally know what creates them