Hera Mission: Europe's First Look at the Asteroid DART Hit
The Hera mission has seen Didymos and Dimorphos as two asteroids for the first time. Here's what DART did, what Hera will find and when the close-ups come.
NASA, ESA and Artemis II missions, new discoveries, and sky events: explained for UK readers
This is where we cover space as it happens: mission updates, new discoveries, and the sky events worth stepping outside for. A lot of it centres on Artemis II right now, NASA's first crewed Moon mission since Apollo, but you'll also find fireball reports, JWST discoveries, asteroid flybys, and the odd story that's stranger than fiction (see: mysterious interstellar objects).
We try to write these the way we'd explain them to a mate down the pub: accurate, but without the jargon. Every article links back to the original NASA, ESA or peer-reviewed source, so if you want to go deeper, you can. And if a story turns out to be wrong or incomplete, we update it rather than pretend it never happened.
For the bigger picture, our James Webb discoveries page gathers the telescope's main findings so far, from the earliest galaxies to a planet covered in molten rock, with links to each full story.
New here? Start with whatever's leading the grid below. It's sorted newest first. If you're after stargazing advice rather than news, our observing guides are a better fit, and if it's the unexplained-sightings side of space you're curious about, that lives in UAP & UFO research.
The Hera mission has seen Didymos and Dimorphos as two asteroids for the first time. Here's what DART did, what Hera will find and when the close-ups come.
A giant planet may have formed from a dead star's ashes. Hubble data from 1999 and a rare metal, niobium, point to a planet born after its star died.
Astronomers have picked up the first radio signal from an exoplanet, Beta Pictoris b. It's aurora, not aliens, and it shows a huge magnetic field.
Starship Flight 14 reached orbit on 28 September 2026 and released 26 Starlink satellites, despite losing an engine on the way up. Here's what happened.
A new crater on the Moon, 222 metres wide, formed in spring 2024 and went unnoticed for 17 months. What NASA found, why nobody saw it, and whether you can.
Asteroid 2026 RW1 hit Earth on 6 September 2026, seven hours after an Arizona telescope found it. Only the 13th asteroid ever caught before impact.
Saturn's decagon is a 10-sided wave at the south pole, found by Hubble and amateur astronomers. How it compares to the hexagon and how to see Saturn now.
Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket reached orbit from Norway on 5 September 2026, the first orbital launch from Western European soil. What it means for the UK.
BepiColombo's Mercury arrival has begun. ESA's transfer module separated from the two orbiters today after an eight-year trip. Here's the timeline to orbit.
NASA has switched on the Roman Space Telescope's Coronagraph Instrument, the most advanced planet imager ever flown. Here's what it does and what happens next.
Is Mars molten inside? A new Nature study finds the planet's southern interior is 200 to 400°C hotter than the north, and may be partially molten.
The Roman Space Telescope launched at 12:26pm UK time on 30 August 2026 on a Falcon Heavy, and this is what it will do at L2 and what happens next.
Betelgeuse's companion star has finally been imaged. ESO's Very Large Telescope caught Betelgeuse B, ending a search that began a century ago.
The next proper lunar eclipse from the UK is a partial on 12 January 2028, then a total on 31 December 2028. Plus a record of the 28 August 2026 partial.
The Roman Space Telescope launched on 30 August 2026 at 12:26pm UK time. Here's what happened, how to rewatch it and where Roman is now.
Chang'e 7's launch has been postponed after tropical storm Narra closed in on Hainan. What went wrong, and when will China's Moon water-ice mission fly?
James Webb has found 'hidden stars' in the universe's first galaxies. Some may be four times more massive than we thought. Here's what that means.
NASA has called off the Swift rescue mission after the LINK spacecraft's spin proved unfixable. The telescope will now fall back to Earth. Here's what happened.
The fastest star in the Milky Way has been found. S301 circles our galaxy's black hole at 25,000 km/s, so close it feels the black hole's spin.
China's Zhuque-3 rocket has landed its booster on legs in the Gobi Desert, making LandSpace the first private Chinese company to recover a rocket.
The Helix Nebula is being recycled. A new telescope in Chile has found 22 shock waves where a dying star's debris slams into interstellar space.
A black hole shredding a massive star has produced the most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded, releasing as much energy as 400 billion Suns.
A stellar stream has been found outside the Milky Way for the first time. The faint trail of stars gives astronomers a new way to map dark matter.
Space mirror light pollution would be severe, a new study finds. Reflect Orbital's mirrors would shine 40 times brighter than the full moon in the beam.
The 28 August 2026 partial lunar eclipse from the UK began at 3:33am BST and peaked at 5:12am, with the Moon 93% eclipsed, low in the west-south-west.
What happened during the 12 August 2026 solar eclipse, how UK observers experienced it, and when the next eclipse will be visible from Britain.
The sharpest image of the Sun ever captured shows tiny whirlpools swirling across its surface, and they may help solve the Sun's biggest mystery.
Voyager 2 was on course to lose another instrument this year. NASA's 'Big Bang' power swap has bought the 49-year-old probe at least another year of science.
Is Venus geologically active? New ETH Zurich simulations say yes: its giant rift valleys are still growing up to 10 cm a year. Venus is far from dead.
An ISS spacewalk was scheduled for 6 August 2026, with NASA's Jessica Meir and Anil Menon due to head outside at 1:35pm UK time.
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 stage hit the Moon this morning near crater Einstein. Here's who was watching, what we know so far and when we'll see the new crater.
'Three-headed' asteroid 44 Nysa looks like the first three-lobed asteroid ever found: 75km wide, with a 1km moon. How telescopes on Earth beat Hubble.
How did Mars lose its atmosphere? A new study caught giant plasma waves from the solar wind stripping it away, seen by NASA's MAVEN and China's Tianwen-1.
The Swift rescue mission has hit trouble: the LINK spacecraft is spinning in orbit after two reaction wheels failed. Here's what went wrong and what's next.
NASA has confirmed the Roman Space Telescope launch date: 30 August 2026 on a Falcon Heavy. The most powerful survey telescope ever built is fuelled and ready.
The Late Heavy Bombardment has been in textbooks for 52 years. The first rocks ever returned from the far side of the Moon show no sign it happened.
Starship Flight 13 launched on 24 July 2026 and deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first cargo Starship has ever released in space. What happened.
The Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks around 29–30 July 2026, but a Full Moon spoils it. Here's how to see it from the UK, and why early August is better.
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage will crash into the Moon on 5 August 2026 near crater Einstein. Here's when it happens and whether you can see it.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was a rare CO chondrite from beyond Jupiter, new research shows. And it was dust, not sulphur, that did the killing.
Astronomers have found the first atmosphere on a rocky planet in a star's habitable zone. LHS 1140 b, 48 light-years away, is leaking helium into space.
India's first privately built rocket has reached orbit. Skyroot's Vikram-1 launched from Sriharikota on 18 July carrying six payloads.
SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 aborted at zero seconds on 16 July after four engines failed to light. Here's what went wrong and when it flies again.
A new planet has been discovered by NASA's James Webb telescope. Beta Pictoris d was found not by its light, but by the chemical fingerprint of its atmosphere.
Reflect Orbital has FCC approval to launch its first space mirror and beam sunlight to Earth at night. Astronomers fear 50,000 could follow.
China has landed an orbital rocket booster for the first time. The Long March 10B was caught by a net on a ship at sea, a world-first technique.
NASA's TESS has discovered a new planet by bending spacetime: Gaia23bra b, a super-Jupiter 40,000 light-years away, found via gravitational microlensing.
How big is the Milky Way? NASA's Chandra has found two of our galaxy's spiral arms sit about 10% further out than we thought, measured with X-ray light echoes.
The oldest quasars ever discovered: ESA's Euclid telescope has found 31 from the universe's first 770 million years, including two new record-holders.
China's Tianwen-2 spacecraft has arrived at Kamo'oalewa, Earth's quasi-moon that may be a blasted-off chunk of our real Moon. Here's what happens next.
Hayabusa2 flew past asteroid Torifune on 5 July 2026, passing about 1km away at 12,000mph, with closest approach planned for 10:30am UK time.
A potentially habitable super-Earth has been found 25 light-years away. New measurements show GJ 3378b is rocky and sits in its star's Goldilocks zone.
The Swift rescue mission was delayed mid-flight on 2 July after a problem stopped the last Pegasus rocket from launching. Here's what happened and what's next.
The last Pegasus rocket was set to launch a robot to catch NASA's falling Swift telescope on 2 July 2026, but that attempt was stopped mid-flight.
On 27 June 2026 the June Bootids meteor shower peaked, the Moon sat beside red Antares, and Mars passed the Pleiades before dawn in the UK sky.
Hubble has spotted ultraviolet light from MXDFz4.4, a tiny galaxy 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, the first clear case of one clearing cosmic fog.
James Webb data suggests comet 3I/ATLAS formed 10–12 billion years ago, nearly as old as the universe, with 30× the deuterium of any Solar System comet.
SpaceX launched Starfall today, a disk-shaped capsule built to return up to a tonne of cargo from orbit, aimed squarely at the space-manufacturing boom.
NASA Swift telescope rescue: the 22-year-old observatory is falling out of orbit, so a robot called Link launches on 27 June 2026 to push it back up.
NASA has named the Artemis III crew. Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas will fly in 2027 to clear the way for the next Moon landing.
ISS air leak, 5 June 2026: NASA ordered five astronauts to shelter in a docked SpaceX Dragon after a crack in the Russian Zvezda module got worse.
After half a century of searching, astronomers have finally detected wind blowing from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy.
Asteroid 2026 JH2 passed Earth at just 90,000 km on 18 May 2026, about a quarter of the Moon's distance, and could be watched by telescope or live stream.
2002 XV93 is a 500 km Kuiper Belt object with a thin atmosphere it is far too small and cold to hold. What the Nature Astronomy study found.
Vesta opposition 2 May 2025: the brightest asteroid reached magnitude 5.7, at the naked-eye limit. It returned on 13 October 2026; next is January 2028.
Eta Aquariid meteor shower 2026 UK guide: Halley's Comet debris peaks before dawn on 5 to 6 May, with 10 to 30 fast meteors an hour and a Moon to beat.
Artemis II crew at the White House on 29 April 2026, as NASA confirmed Artemis III for late 2027 and a crewed lunar landing in 2028. What comes next.
JWST Population III stars: two teams find the strongest evidence yet for the first stars, in a gas clump called Hebe 13.4 billion light-years away.
Falcon Heavy returned on 27 April 2026, launching the 6.6-ton ViaSat-3 F3 satellite from Kennedy Space Center and landing two boosters at Cape Canaveral.
New Glenn engine failure: the reused booster landed on 19 April 2026 but an upper-stage fault left BlueBird 7 in a useless orbit, and the FAA grounded it.
JWST buckyballs: Webb has imaged planetary nebula Tc 1, where carbon-60 spheres were first found in space, and mapped them in a shell round the dying star.
Hubble 36th anniversary image revisits the Trifid Nebula, 5,000 light-years away, and next to its 1997 view shows protostar jets growing before our eyes.
The Lyrid meteor shower peaked on the night of 22/23 April 2026, with the Moon setting early, dark skies after that and a chance of fireballs.
Roman Space Telescope unveiled: NASA's fully assembled survey telescope has 200 times Hubble's field of view and could launch as early as autumn 2026.
Blue Origin New Glenn first booster reuse, 19 April 2026: a previously flown first stage launched again, closing the gap with SpaceX on reusable rockets.
Comet PanSTARRS C/2025 R3 UK viewing guide, April 2026: perihelion on 19 April, binocular-bright at magnitude 6 and best seen low in the east before dawn.
Artemis II flyby complete: Orion passed 4,070 miles above the Moon's far side on 6 April 2026, broke the Apollo 13 record and splashes down on 11 April.
Comet MAPS disintegrated on 4 April 2026, six hours before perihelion, after reaching magnitude -0.6. What SOHO showed and why the Easter comet never came.
Comet MAPS reaches perihelion on 4 April 2026, passing 161,000 km above the Sun. How to follow it in SOHO data, its survival odds and how to spot it after.
Artemis II launch: NASA's SLS lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 6:24 pm ET on 1 April 2026, the first crewed Moon mission in 54 years.
Comet MAPS was due to skim just 161,000 km above the Sun's surface on 4 April 2026, but it disintegrated about six hours before perihelion.
On 26 March 2026 the waxing gibbous Moon passed Jupiter high in the evening sky, a naked-eye pairing framed by Gemini's twin stars, seen from the UK.
Ohio fireball 2026: on 17 March a 7-ton asteroid exploded over Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT and dropped meteorites in Medina County.
Kit we've reviewed in full
Reading about a launch or a close asteroid pass is one thing. Seeing it (or the sky it happens under) is better. These two cover most space-news moments, from watching a launch window to tracking down a newly reported fireball's radiant.
A wide, bright field that's easy to point at whatever's just made the news: a bright pass, a conjunction, or a meteor radiant. The most-recommended starter binocular in UK astronomy circles.
When a story involves an asteroid or a comet too faint for binoculars, this 130mm tabletop reflector has enough light grasp to find it, and it's a genuinely good Moon and planet scope the rest of the time.
Affiliate links: you pay the same price, we earn a small commission that helps keep WatchTheStars free.