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.
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.
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.
Ian Clayton
7 October 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
5 October 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
29 September 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
18 September 2026
Asteroid 2026 RW1 hit Earth on 6 September 2026, seven hours after a telescope in Arizona found it. It is only the 13th asteroid ever caught before impact. Here is the full list.
Ian Clayton
15 September 2026
Saturn's decagon is a new 10-sided wave around the south pole, found by Hubble and amateur astronomers. What it is, how it compares to the hexagon, and how to see Saturn now.
Ian Clayton
7 September 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
6 September 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
3 September 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
2 September 2026
September 2026 night sky guide for the UK: Venus at its brightest, Neptune at opposition, Saturn near its best and the Harvest Moon on the 26th.
Ian Clayton
1 September 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
31 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
30 August 2026
Betelgeuse's companion star has finally been imaged. ESO's Very Large Telescope caught Betelgeuse B, ending a search that began a century ago.
Ian Clayton
28 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
27 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
25 August 2026
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?
Ian Clayton
24 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
23 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
21 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
20 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
19 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
18 August 2026
A black hole shredding a massive star has produced the most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded, releasing as much energy as 400 billion Suns.
Ian Clayton
17 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
16 August 2026
August 2026 night sky guide for the UK: darkness returns, Saturn climbs high after midnight, Venus hits greatest elongation, and a deep lunar eclipse lands on 28 August.
Ian Clayton
16 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
15 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
14 August 2026
What happened during the 12 August 2026 solar eclipse, how UK observers experienced it, and when the next eclipse will be visible from Britain.
Ian Clayton
13 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
11 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
9 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
7 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
6 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
5 August 2026
'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.
Ian Clayton
4 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
3 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
2 August 2026
The 2026 Perseids peaked on 12–13 August under a new Moon, the best Perseid conditions in a decade. UK viewing times, where to look and how many to expect.
Ian Clayton
1 August 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
31 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
29 July 2026
SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 flew on 24 July 2026 and deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first cargo Starship has ever released in space. Here's what happened.
Ian Clayton
26 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
25 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
24 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
21 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
20 July 2026
India's first privately built rocket has reached orbit. Skyroot's Vikram-1 launched from Sriharikota on 18 July carrying six payloads.
Ian Clayton
18 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
17 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
16 July 2026
Reflect Orbital has FCC approval to launch its first space mirror and beam sunlight to Earth at night. Astronomers fear 50,000 could follow.
Ian Clayton
14 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
13 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
10 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
9 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
8 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
6 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
5 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
4 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
3 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
2 July 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
27 June 2026
Hubble has spotted ultraviolet light from a galaxy that existed 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang: the first clear example of the kind of galaxy that cleared the early universe's fog.
Ian Clayton
26 June 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
25 June 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
23 June 2026
On 24 June, ESA's Euclid releases its deepest-ever view of the Milky Way's crowded core, a 4.8-square-degree survey built to help confirm planets around other stars.
Ian Clayton
22 June 2026
NASA's 22-year-old Swift telescope is slowly falling out of orbit. On 27 June a robot called Link launches to grab it and push it back to safety, the first rescue of its kind.
Ian Clayton
21 June 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
10 June 2026
On June 5, NASA ordered five crew members to shelter in a docked SpaceX Dragon after a worsening crack in the ISS's Russian segment triggered an evacuation alert: the most dramatic sign yet that the station is running out of time.
Ian Clayton
7 June 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
6 June 2026
Venus and Jupiter meet for a stunning close conjunction on June 9, Mercury joins for a rare three-planet lineup on June 12, noctilucent clouds return, and the Strawberry Moon closes out the month.
Ian Clayton
5 June 2026
James Webb Space Telescope images M77 (NGC 1068), revealing the active black hole, 6,000-light-year starburst ring, and hidden star formation of this Cetus Seyfert galaxy.
Ian Clayton
20 May 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
18 May 2026
The universe isn't scattered randomly. It's built on a vast hidden skeleton of dark matter filaments. James Webb just gave us our best look at it yet.
Ian Clayton
16 May 2026
On Friday 15 May, NASA's Psyche probe will swing just 4,500 km from the surface of Mars in a gravity assist that will fling it toward one of the most mysterious objects in the solar system: a metal world that may be the exposed core of a dead planet.
Ian Clayton
13 May 2026
Astronomers have detected a thin atmosphere around a 500-kilometre Kuiper Belt object: far too small and cold to hold one. The discovery, published in Nature Astronomy, could rewrite what we know about the outer Solar System.
Ian Clayton
6 May 2026
A massive, dust-choked galaxy discovered just 400 million years after the Big Bang is challenging everything astronomers thought they knew about how galaxies form.
Ian Clayton
4 May 2026
Vesta reached opposition on 2 May 2025 at magnitude 5.7, right at the naked-eye limit. It was back at opposition on 13 October 2026; the next is in late January 2028.
Ian Clayton
2 May 2026
Eta Aquariid meteors peak before dawn on 5–6 May: fragments of Halley's Comet hitting the atmosphere at 150,000 mph. Here's your complete UK guide to where, when and how to watch, including tips for beating the moonlight.
Ian Clayton
1 May 2026
For three years, astronomers have been baffled by hundreds of mysterious red objects in JWST's images. Now Chandra has detected X-rays from one, and the explanation is unlike anything in the known universe.
Ian Clayton
1 May 2026
NASA's moon astronauts stood in the Oval Office as the agency confirmed Artemis III for late 2027 and a crewed lunar landing in 2028, with the SLS rocket already at Kennedy Space Center.
Ian Clayton
30 April 2026
Two independent research teams have found the strongest evidence yet for Population III stars, the very first generation of stars to form after the Big Bang, hiding in a tiny clump of gas 13.4 billion light-years away.
Ian Clayton
28 April 2026
SpaceX's triple-core beast roars back to life today, hurling a 6.6-ton satellite toward geostationary orbit and sticking a double booster landing at Cape Canaveral.
Ian Clayton
27 April 2026
Blue Origin reused a New Glenn booster for the first time on 19 April, but an upper-stage engine failure put the customer's satellite in a useless orbit. The FAA has grounded the rocket.
Ian Clayton
25 April 2026
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first detailed image of the planetary nebula where cosmic buckyballs, hollow spheres of 60 carbon atoms, were originally discovered. The structures are breathtaking.
Ian Clayton
25 April 2026
NASA celebrated Hubble's 36th anniversary by revisiting the Trifid Nebula, and by comparing the new image with one taken 29 years ago, astronomers can see a stellar nursery evolving on human timescales.
Ian Clayton
24 April 2026
A chemistry experiment never before performed beyond Earth has revealed 21 organic molecules in 3.5-billion-year-old Martian rock, seven of them detected on Mars for the first time, including a DNA precursor.
Ian Clayton
23 April 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
22 April 2026
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is fully assembled and ready for its journey to space. With 200 times Hubble's field of view, it will map billions of galaxies, discover thousands of exoplanets, and probe the mystery of dark energy.
Ian Clayton
21 April 2026
Astronomers have captured a supermassive black hole reawakening after 100 million years of silence, blasting plasma jets nearly a million light-years across space in one of the most dramatic 'reborn' black hole events ever recorded.
Ian Clayton
20 April 2026
Blue Origin launched a previously-flown New Glenn booster for the first time today, a milestone that closes the gap with SpaceX and could reshape how we think about the cost of getting to space.
Ian Clayton
19 April 2026
NASA has formally greenlighted its support for ESA's Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, confirming a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch no earlier than late 2028, and making it SpaceX's first-ever mission to Mars.
Ian Clayton
18 April 2026
Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) reaches perihelion on 19 April and could become visible to the naked eye. Here's everything you need to know: including when, where, and how to spot it from the UK.
Ian Clayton
11 April 2026
The lunar flyby is complete. Orion has swung around the Moon, broken the human distance record, witnessed Earthrise over the far side, and is now coasting back toward Earth. Splashdown: April 11.
Ian Clayton
7 April 2026
Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) disintegrated six hours before perihelion on 4 April, reaching magnitude –0.6 before breaking apart. The hoped-for Easter Comet display will not happen: here's what the SOHO data tells us.
Ian Clayton
5 April 2026
Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) reaches perihelion tomorrow, skimming just 161,000 km above the Sun's surface. SOHO is already watching. Here's how to follow the action, and how to spot it if it survives.
Ian Clayton
3 April 2026
It happened. At 6:24 p.m. ET on April 1, 2026, NASA's SLS rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center carrying four astronauts on humanity's first crewed voyage to the Moon in 54 years.
Ian Clayton
2 April 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
1 April 2026
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.
Ian Clayton
26 March 2026
Astronomers have quietly announced the discovery of 15 new moons, 11 for Saturn and 4 for Jupiter. It brings Saturn's total to 285 and Jupiter's to 101, and the solar system's combined moon count to 442.
Ian Clayton
22 March 2026
On the morning of 17 March 2026, a 7-ton asteroid blazing at 45,000 mph lit up the skies from Wisconsin to Maryland before exploding above Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT, and dropping real meteorites into a field south of Cleveland.
Ian Clayton
20 March 2026
A solar flare from AR4392 launched a CME at Earth, due on the evening of 19 March 2026, giving Scotland and northern England a forecast chance of aurora.
Ian Clayton
18 March 2026
Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to confirm a new type of planet that shouldn't be able to exist, a world where the entire surface is a permanent ocean of molten rock, kept alive by a sulphurous atmosphere.
Ian Clayton
17 March 2026
Only the third interstellar object ever detected, 3I/ATLAS has stunned scientists with alien water, extraordinary levels of methanol, and deuterium ratios unlike anything in our solar system. And this Sunday, it passes Jupiter.
Ian Clayton
11 March 2026
Kit we've tested and 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.
