#Space

The company hopes to break SpaceX’s industry stranglehold with New Glenn. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin hopes to become a major rival to SpaceX in the private space industry. But those ambitions are on hold after the company postponed the test launch of its new rocket earlier today.

We have only one example of biology forming in the universe—life on Earth. But what if life can form in other ways? How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like? These questions are preoccupying astrobiologists—scientists who look for life beyond Earth.

Slowly repeating bursts of intense radio waves from space have puzzled astronomers since they were discovered in 2022. In new research, my colleagues and I have for the first time tracked one of these pulsating signals back to its source: a common kind of lightweight star called a red dwarf,

Water is ubiquitous on Earth—about 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by the stuff. Water is in the air, on the surface, and inside rocks. Geologic evidence suggests water has been stable on Earth since about 4.3 billion years ago. The history of water on early Mars is less certain.

The European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for initial work on a mission to visit an asteroid called Apophis. If approved at a key meeting next year, the robotic spacecraft, known as the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses), will rendezvous with the asteroid in February 2029.