From time to time a bright comet with long, trailing tails becomes visible with the naked eye. However,…
Have you ever wondered why you always fall back to the ground with a bump, no matter how…
On 4 July, a 370 kg copper probe from NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft will crash into the icy…
A new chapter in the exploration of Mars is about to begin. After a long delay, the MARSIS…
Austria and Switzerland came out on top when the winners of the international ‘Rosetta Up Close’ photo contest…
Europe has reached the Moon, and ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft is beginning to send back spectacular images of Earth’s…
Among the many scientific achievements of Huygens was the first ever recording of sounds sent back from another…
History was made earlier today when ESA’s Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Signals received…
450 years ago, a Dutch astronomer named Christiaan Huygens discovered a large moon orbiting Saturn. It was eventually…
One of the most exciting chapters in the history of space exploration is about to begin. After a…
This animation shows how most comets originate in an area beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, filled…
Up to three times a year, the full Moon’s bright face slowly changes to a dark orange colour.…
Ceres is now known to have a width of about 940 km – about one quarter (one fourth)…
Asteroids are small, rocky bodies that have been left over from the formation of the planets 4.5 billion…
Earth is a moving target in a shooting gallery. Almost every day, a small chunk of space rock…
Every day about 50 tonnes of rocky material from space lands on the Earth’s surface. These rocks are…
In March 1986, ESA’s Giotto spacecraft flew to within 600 km of comet Halley’s nucleus. It sent back…
Most asteroids are so small and so far away that we can only see them as tiny points…
Even with the largest telescopes it is very hard to see much detail on Mars. In the late…
The Cassini-Huygens mission, involving ESA, NASA and the Italian Space Agency, has changed many of our ideas about…
The Moon has been circling the Earth for more than four billion years. But where did it come…
Everyone on Earth is a traveller through space. First, the Earth zooms around the Sun at a speed…
Pictures sent back by spacecraft such as ESA’s Mars Express show that Mars has many large impact craters.…
Studies of fossils in ancient rocks tell us that life probably began about 4 billion years ago, when…
The Moon is too small to hold onto any air. Without any winds, the sunny side is hotter…
Millions of years ago, the Moon was much closer and bigger in the sky. It was also spinning…
In 1877, the American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered two small moons circling the planet Mars. They were named…
Earth is like no other planet that we have yet observed. It is the only world we know…
Saturn has 31 known moons – more than any other planet except Jupiter. One of them, Titan, is…
Saturn is famous as the ‘lord of the rings’, even though the other three giant gas planets –…
