These space stories made us look up in 2025

The rocket’s future in the Trump administration, like much of space exploration policy, is uncertain. NASA’s Space Launch System, the rocket intended to return humans to the moon, sits outside the agency’s Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, Fla. He previously worked as a science editor at National Geographic, Smithsonian and Popular Mechanics. Jay Bennett is a writer based in Copenhagen who covers space, dinosaurs and rocks, among other things. Extreme environmental tolerance and space survivability of the moss, Physcomitrium patens.

‘At the edge of what we thought possible’: Astronomers find extremely rare star from ancient universe

“I said ‘Maybe look for something in the paper industry,’” he said. But McKay also knew an entry to have any shot at flying in space would require a corporate sponsor/mentor. Hebert hopes the exhibit and story helps inspire young students to explore science and technology careers, like the opportunity 40 years ago inspired him. It was a major moment for the North American paper industry that involved the contributions of eight or nine companies from multiple states and Canadian provinces, Holbrook said. The experiment and the artifacts Holbrook collected are part of Cosmic Kraft, a new History Museum at the Castle exhibit to celebrate the experiment’s 40th anniversary in January 2026. What the purpose of the experiment is is to try to remove gravity as one of the three parameters in the formation of fibers,” Hawley said in archive footage posted to YouTube.

HEALTH

This picture of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas combines 678 images taken by the Vera Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours. “Our ability to be competitive in space exploration is going to depend on our ability to keep astronauts healthy,” Overbey says. She and her colleagues assessed health data from the SpaceX Inspiration4 civilian crew, who spent three days in space.

And while human and commercial spaceflight will probably get a boost in the next administration, it’s less clear what the future holds for astronomy and pure space science. Here are some of the Hubble images from the last 35 years that have informed and inspired both scientists and the general public alike. Hubble was launched into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990 and shepherded into low Earth orbit by astronauts. Researchers have collectively written more than 21,000 peer-reviewed publications using Hubble data (this astronomer–turned–science journalist wrote two of them). My top space image wows me every time. I have something of a sentimental attachment to this vista, since it was on the cover of the Great Courses intro to astronomy DVD set that first sparked my interest in space science.

Additional information

When I used to give public talks about astronomy, I almost always closed with this image. Yes, we want to better understand how space and time, stars and planets, galaxies and superclusters work, because we’re curious. One of the images, which came to be known as the “pale blue dot” photo, captured Earth as seen from roughly 6 billion kilometers away — the most distant image of home anyone has ever taken.

Recent posts in Humans

Learn about other APA elements of an academic paper such as using Headings, Lists, Tables, etc. on the APA Style Elements page. For most of your college papers, double spacing is a requirement, and a part of APA formatting. Double spacing refers to the amount of space between the lines within your Word document. Double click outside of the top margin of your paper to get back to the text area of your document.

Space missions spanned the solar system in 2024

Hawley grabbed a small microphone, looked at the video camera and became the first — and so far only — person to make paper in space at the suggestion of an Appleton high school student. At the same time, astronaut Steve Hawley unpacked nine of the same slurry-filled devices from a storage box aboard the space shuttle Columbia. In every design you’ll find familiar surface features based on real science, artfully rendered with generous space for your own out of this world creations.

They also inspired us to reflect on the top space images past and present. We’ve never seen images of space as astounding as those from the James Webb Space Telescope, which shared its first cosmic vistas in July. And plans to have private companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin land astronauts on the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis missions are in flux heading into 2026. Located on a high, dry mountaintop, the observatory will take a patchwork quilt of wide-field images to cover the entire Southern Hemisphere’s nighttime view every couple of days.

This cycle is fundamentally different from prior space booms. The next phase of space growth will not be defined solely by innovation in orbit, but by the ability to build, qualify, and deliver at scale. This paper examines industrial base risks including inconsistent demand signals, part-level bottlenecks, testing and post-processing constraints, and regulatory burdens that limit new entrants and investment. The US space sector is entering a period of sustained growth, but its supply chain remains fragile. Try your hand as an engineer, and build a paper model of the Roman Space Telescope.

Telescopes on the ground cannot observe UV light from space since our planet’s atmosphere blocks most of it. And there are some observations that simply can’t be done with any other telescope, including Hubble’s younger sibling, the James Webb Space Telescope. Science News and our parent organization, the Society for Science, need your help to strengthen environmental literacy and ensure that our response to climate change is informed by science. We are at a critical time and supporting climate journalism is more important than ever. The image, updated with modern image-processing software and re-released in 2020 (above), remains a reminder of why https://spacepaper.io/ we explore the universe.