Venus may have an underground magma ocean spanning the whole planet
2 April 2020
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
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Premium
Bombing asteroid Ryugu reveals it is a spritely 9 million years old
19 March 2020
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
Mercury’s outer layers may have been stripped off by a young Venus
7 January 2020
Mercury is mostly iron, which may be because a series of close encounters with a young Venus billions of years ago stripped away its rocky outer layers
NASA missions may go to Venus or our solar system’s strangest moons
13 February 2020
NASA has selected four potential future missions – to Jupiter’s fiery moon Io, Neptune’s icy moon Triton, and two that would explore the atmosphere and map the surface of Venus
When will we hear from aliens? We may already have done so
9 December 2019
It is just a matter of time before we hear from alien civilisations, argues Avi Loeb – in fact, we may already have done so
Maggie Aderin-Pocock on space travel and humanity's future
9 October 2019
Space scientist and presenter Maggie Aderin-Pocock sees our future in space, even though it will take thousands of years to reach neighbouring solar systems
Surprisingly round asteroid may actually be the smallest dwarf planet
28 October 2019
The best ever image of the asteroid Hygiea has revealed its shape for the first time and it looks as if it is round enough to be a tiny dwarf planet like Pluto
Tiny pebbles may be the reason most planets spin in the same direction
24 July 2019
We thought planets are built as huge boulders smash together. But if it is pebbles instead, that better explains why planets all spin the same way
Surprisingly wet asteroid dust could spark a rethink of Earth's water
1 May 2019
Samples of space dust from the Hayabusa mission to the asteroid Itokawa are far less dry than we expected, which may prompt a rethink of how Earth got its water
Prepare to jump to light speed: Inside the mission to go interstellar
10 April 2019
Proxima Centauri is 4 light years away. Ambitious space mission Breakthrough Starshot is developing a way to push spacecraft there at a fifth of the speed of light