NASA News

February 17, 2026

Top Headlines

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Completes the First AI-planned Drive on Mars

Feb. 2, 2026 NASA’s Perseverance rover has just made history by driving across Mars using routes planned by artificial intelligence instead of human operators. A vision-capable AI analyzed the same images and terrain data normally used by rover planners, ...

Earth’s Toughest Microbes Could Help Humans Live on Mars

Jan. 6, 2026 Mars looks familiar from afar, but surviving there means creating a protective oasis in a hostile world. Instead of shipping construction materials from Earth, researchers are exploring how to use Martian soil as the raw ingredient. Two tough ...

What Are Asteroids Really Made of? New Analysis Brings Space Mining Closer to Reality

Dec. 25, 2025 Scientists are digging into the hidden makeup of carbon-rich asteroids to see whether they could one day fuel space exploration—or even be mined for valuable resources. By analyzing rare meteorites ...

Japanese Spacecraft Faces a Massive Challenge from a House-size Asteroid

Nov. 21, 2025 New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens scientific interest. The asteroid’s ...

AI Restores James Webb Telescope’s Crystal-clear Vision

Oct. 27, 2025 Two Sydney PhD students have pulled off a remarkable space science feat from Earth—using AI-driven software to correct image blurring in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Their innovation, called AMIGO, fixed distortions in the telescope’s ...

Astronomers Just Captured the Sharpest View of a Distant Star Ever Seen

Oct. 25, 2025 A UCLA-led team has achieved the sharpest-ever view of a distant star’s disk using a groundbreaking photonic lantern device on a single telescope—no multi-telescope array required. This technology splits incoming starlight into multiple ...

The Universe’s First Radio Waves Could Reveal Dark Matter

Oct. 25, 2025 Researchers propose that hydrogen gas from the early Universe emitted detectable radio waves influenced by dark matter. Studying these signals, especially from the Moon’s radio-quiet environment, could reveal how dark matter clumped together ...

The Sun’s Hidden Poles Could Finally Reveal Its Greatest Secrets

Oct. 14, 2025 High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...

The Moon’s South Pole Hides a 4-billion-year-old Secret

Oct. 12, 2025 A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...

An Interstellar Visitor Lights Up the Red Planet’s Sky

Oct. 12, 2025 ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...

Scientists Stunned by Wild Martian Dust Devils Racing at Hurricane Speeds

Oct. 9, 2025 Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...

ESA’s Chilling New “Super Antenna” in Australia Reaches Spacecraft Billions of Miles Away

Oct. 6, 2025 ESA has inaugurated a powerful new 35-meter deep space antenna at its New Norcia site in Western Australia, marking a major boost to Europe’s ability to communicate with spacecraft exploring the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:16am EST

Radar Evidence Suggests a Massive Lava Tube Beneath Venus

Feb. 12, 2026 Scientists have uncovered evidence of a massive underground lava tube hidden beneath the surface of Venus, revealing a new layer of the planet’s volcanic history. By reexamining radar data from ...

Chang’e-6 Lunar Samples Reveal a Giant Impact Reshaped the Moon’s Interior

Feb. 8, 2026 A colossal ancient impact may have reshaped the Moon far more deeply than scientists once realized. By analyzing rare lunar rocks brought back by ...

Something Supercharged Uranus When Voyager 2 Flew Past

Feb. 7, 2026 Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus in 1986 recorded radiation levels so extreme they baffled scientists for nearly 40 years. New research suggests the spacecraft caught Uranus during a rare solar wind ...

Scientists Just Mapped the Hidden Structure Holding the Universe Together

Feb. 3, 2026 Astronomers have produced the most detailed map yet of dark matter, revealing the invisible framework that shaped the Universe long before stars and galaxies formed. Using powerful new observations ...

Strange White Rocks on Mars Hint at Millions of Years of Rain

Jan. 27, 2026 Bright white rocks spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover are rewriting what we thought we knew about ancient Mars. These aluminum-rich clays, called kaolinite, usually form on Earth only after ...

A Dying Star’s Final Breath Glows in a New Webb Image of the Helix Nebula

Jan. 26, 2026 Webb’s latest image of the Helix Nebula reveals a dramatic close-up of a dying star shedding its outer layers. The detailed view highlights glowing knots of gas shaped by fast-moving stellar winds ...

NASA Is Set to Send Astronauts Around the Moon Again

Jan. 25, 2026 NASA is moving into a new phase of space exploration, with major progress across human spaceflight, science missions, and advanced technology. In just one year, the agency has launched multiple ...

“Stars Like the Sun Don’t Just Stop Shining,” but This One Did

Jan. 24, 2026 A distant Sun-like star suddenly went dark for months, stunning astronomers who quickly realized something massive was passing in front of it. Observations revealed a gigantic disk of gas and dust ...

NASA Astronaut Suni Williams Retires After 608 Days in Space and Nine Spacewalks

Jan. 22, 2026 NASA astronaut Suni Williams has retired after 27 years of service and a career defined by endurance, leadership, and firsts in space. She spent 608 ...

Spacecraft Captures the "magnetic Avalanche" That Triggers Giant Solar Explosions

Jan. 21, 2026 Solar Orbiter has captured the clearest evidence yet that a solar flare grows through a cascading “magnetic avalanche.” Small, weak magnetic ...

Earlier Headlines

The Ring Nebula Is Hiding a Giant Structure Made of Iron

Jan. 18, 2026 A huge bar of iron has been discovered lurking inside the iconic Ring Nebula. The structure is enormous, spanning hundreds of times the size of Pluto’s orbit and containing a Mars-sized amount of ...

NASA Brings Crew-11 Home Early in Rare Medical Evacuation

Jan. 16, 2026 SpaceX Crew-11 splashed down safely in the Pacific after more than five months in orbit aboard the International Space Station. The four astronauts completed over 140 experiments and traveled nearly ...

Those Strange Red Dots in James Webb Images Finally Have an Explanation

Jan. 16, 2026 For years, strange red dots in James Webb images left scientists puzzled. New research shows they are young black holes hidden inside dense clouds of gas, glowing as they devour their surroundings. ...

10 Quintillion Hydrogen Bombs Every Second: Webb Detects Massive Galactic Eruption

Jan. 10, 2026 Scientists have discovered an enormous stream of super-hot gas erupting from a nearby galaxy, driven by a powerful black hole at its center. The jets stretch farther than the galaxy itself and spiral ...

A New Study Casts Doubt on Life Beneath Europa’s Ice

Jan. 7, 2026 Europa’s buried ocean has made it one of the most exciting places to search for life beyond Earth. However, new calculations suggest its seafloor may be calm, cold, and largely inactive, with ...

Astronomers Ring in the New Year With a Stunning Galaxy Collision

Dec. 31, 2025 The Champagne Cluster is a rare and beautiful example of two galaxy clusters smashing together. Its festive name comes from both its New Year’s Eve discovery and its bubbly appearance in space. ...

A Planet Just Vanished. NASA’s Hubble Reveals a Violent Cosmic Secret

Jan. 1, 2026 Astronomers tracking a nearby star system thought they had spotted an exoplanet reflecting light from its star. Then it vanished. Even stranger, another bright object appeared nearby. After studying ...

What Scientists Found Inside Titan Was Not What Anyone Expected

Dec. 20, 2025 For years, scientists thought Saturn’s moon Titan hid a global ocean beneath its frozen surface. A new look at Cassini data now suggests something very different: a thick, slushy interior with ...

Most Distant Supernova: James Webb Sees a Star Explode at Cosmic Dawn

Dec. 28, 2025 Scientists have detected the most distant supernova ever seen, exploding when the universe was less than a billion years old. The event was first signaled by a gamma-ray burst and later confirmed ...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Just Discovered One of the Weirdest Planets Ever

Jan. 1, 2026 A newly discovered exoplanet is rewriting the rules of what planets can be. Orbiting a city-sized neutron star, this Jupiter-mass world has a bizarre carbon-rich atmosphere filled with soot clouds ...

Earth Has Been Feeding the Moon for Billions of Years

Jan. 5, 2026 Tiny bits of Earth’s atmosphere have been drifting to the moon for billions of years, guided by Earth’s magnetic field. Rather than blocking particles, the magnetic field can funnel them along ...

Webb Finds a Hidden Atmosphere on a Molten Super-Earth

Dec. 14, 2025 Webb’s latest observations reveal a hellish world cloaked in an unexpected atmosphere: TOI-561 b, an ultra-hot rocky planet racing around its star in under 11 hours. Despite being blasted by ...

New Images Reveal What Really Happens When Stars Explode

Dec. 31, 2025 New high-resolution images show that novae are anything but simple stellar fireworks. One exploded with multiple gas streams colliding almost immediately, while another shockingly delayed its ...

A Nearby Earth-Size Planet Just Got Much More Mysterious

Dec. 12, 2025 TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized world in the system’s habitable zone, is drawing scientific attention as researchers hunt for signs of an atmosphere—and potentially life-supporting conditions. Early ...

New Cosmic Lens Measurements Deepen the Hubble Tension Mystery

Dec. 9, 2025 Scientists are testing a novel way to measure cosmic expansion using time delays in gravitationally lensed quasars. Their results match “local” measurements but clash with early-universe ...

The Solar Mission That Survived Disaster and Found 5,000 Comets

Dec. 3, 2025 For thirty years, SOHO has watched the Sun from a stable perch in space, revealing the inner workings of our star and surviving crises that nearly ended the mission. Its long-term observations ...

Time Runs Faster on Mars and Scientists Just Proved It

Dec. 30, 2025 Thanks to Einstein’s relativity, time flows differently on Mars than on Earth. NIST scientists have now nailed down the difference, showing that Mars clocks tick slightly faster—and fluctuate ...

A Hidden Star Found Where Dust Shouldn’t Exist

Dec. 17, 2025 A mysterious cloud of ultra-hot dust around Kappa Tucanae A may finally have an explanation: a hidden companion star. The star’s extreme orbit carries it straight through the dust zone, strongly ...

Scientists May Have Found Dark Matter After 100 Years of Searching

Nov. 29, 2025 Nearly a century after astronomers first proposed dark matter to explain the strange motions of galaxies, scientists may finally be catching a glimpse of it. A University of Tokyo researcher ...

Scientists May Have Found the Planet That Made the Moon

Nov. 23, 2025 About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...