Space

Monument of great astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus made by Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1822, Warsaw, Poland © Getty Images

Who first claimed planets go round the Sun?

Wally Funk, aged 22, at Fort Still military base

Wally Funk: a story of sexism in the race for space

4.5-billion-year-old hibonite crystals have shed new light on the earliest days of the Solar System © Field Museum/NASA/ESA/University of Chicago

Crystals trapped in meteorites reveal the Sun’s violent past

What do the other planets smell like? © Getty Images

What do the other planets smell like?

Asteroid Ryugu from an altitude of 6km. Image was captured with the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) on July 20, 2018 at around 16:00 JST © JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST.

Japanese space probe takes stunning snaps of asteroid

Water on Mars. Computer artwork looking east over water in Melas Chasma canyon at sunrise on Mars 3.5 billion years ago. Mars is now a desert world, but erosion features seen on Mars today suggest that water once flowed there. The water was lost due to the thin Martian atmosphere and weak gravity. Melas Chasma canyon is part of Valles Marineris, an enormous crack in the Martian crust hundreds of kilometres wide and thousands of kilometres long. The topography of this artwork was drawn with Terragen software, using data from the laser altimeter on the Mars Global Surveyor probe.

How we discovered liquid water on Mars

Hunting for life's cosmic origin © Magic Torch

Hunting for life’s cosmic origin

rtist's concept shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft © NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

What asteroids can tell us about our Solar System

Cleanroom workers take in the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors on 4 May 2016 © NASA/Chris Gunn

10 future space missions to look forward to

How big could a black hole get? © Getty Images

How big could a black hole get?

Could a gas moon exist? © NASA

Could a gas moon exist?

Blood moon: lunar eclipse myths from around the world © Getty Images

Blood moon: lunar eclipse myths from around the world

Why do objects in space follow elliptical orbits? © Getty Images

Why do objects in space follow elliptical orbits?

Who really discovered the first exoplanet? © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Who really discovered the first exoplanet?