Keith Cooper

To test its autonomous software, the JUICE mission team pretended to fly the spacecraft past Jupiter's fourth moon, and passed the exam with flying colors.

A rare massive star possessing a magnetic field could have produced its dynamo after merging with another star.

More evolved galaxies demonstrate a greater range of stellar motions compared to the orderly, circular orbits of stars like our sun in the Milky Way.

The stars of a possible ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, known as UMa3/U1, could be held in place by the gravitational glue of dark matter.

The future European Space Agency mission could include an orbiting spacecraft as well as a lander, both of which would sample ocean material in Enceladus' plumes.

A quasar over three billion light-years away was found to be rather gentle on its host galaxy, allowing its black hole to keep growing.

The European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin Mars rover now has a detailed map with which to help find its way around the Red Planet when it lands sometime in the next decade.

A single icy moon grain could host tiny microbes or cellular remnants of life. If so, NASA's Europa Clipper may one day be able to find life near Jupiter.

The concept for a flying, wing-heavy drone called MAGGIE could one day show us an entirely new perspective on Mars.

When NASA's DART spacecraft crashed into the small asteroid Dimorphos in September of 2022, the impact's energy changed the asteroid’s trajectory and substantially altered its shape.

Nearly 1.3 million quasars are included in a vast cosmic map, with the most distant having existed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

The Hubble Space Telescope's latest look at Jupiter finds writhing storms and a shrinking Great Red Spot.

The CADRE rovers, destined for the next Intuitive Machines mission to the moon, are able to work together thanks to cooperative software.

The Vela supernova remnant looks breathtaking in this image from the powerful DECam, revealing intricacies in debris that resulted from the destruction of a massive star 11,000 years ago.

The discovery of the first exoplanets was a watershed moment for both science and science fiction, which has attempted to keep pace with scientific knowledge of other worlds.

The JWST's findings further scientists' conundrum of having different measurements of the expansion of the universe, which may require new physics to resolve.

The astrolabe dates from 11th-century Spain and has origins that are Islamic, Jewish and Christian.

The hunt for the first stars, known as Population III stars, may be nearing an end as the James Webb Space Telescope spotted tantalizing evidence for them in one of the earliest galaxies known.

This pretty spiral galaxy is an important milestone for cosmologists seeking to understand the expansion of the universe.

How a cosmic dust storm is helping New Horizons to redraw the map of the outer solar system.

Methane detected near dwarf planets Eris and Makemake could have come from within their interiors, produced by geochemical reactions amid hot rock.

Organic material on Saturn moon Titan's surface may have difficulty getting to the underground ocean. That's where it'd need to go for Titan to potentially support life.

Astronomers revitalize an old concept called the SETI Ellipsoid that incorporates supernovas in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

As predicted by general relativity, the rapid spin of our galaxy's 4.1-million-solar-mass black hole is able to warp the fabric of spacetime.

The observations offer a window into the past to better understand how globular clusters may have formed.