The $23 million toilet on the International Space Station feeds a centrifuge-driven water recycler that helps the station's combined recovery system reclaim 98 percent of recoverable water — a closed loop NASA spent four decades getting right.
A scorched lava world 41 light-years away turned out to keep a hidden atmosphere, suggesting that even hell-like planets might retain secrets worth investigating.
The solar system's moon inventory just became wildly imbalanced, with Saturn's sudden discovery of 128 new worlds raising questions about what we thought we knew about planetary formation.
A spacecraft hurtling through the Sun's crown has shattered the speed record for human engineering, reaching velocities that would traverse the globe in minutes.
A tiny British sensor could buy the planet hours to prepare for solar storms that routinely cripple power grids and satellites.
Tokyo's push for surveillance independence reveals a calculated bet: betting geopolitical autonomy on a Finnish startup's unproven technology rather than remaining tethered to American intelligence infrastructure.
For the first time, astronomers have watched a supermassive black hole feed itself and then expel its meal in a cosmic cycle that may explain how these monsters grew so rapidly in the early universe.
A mysterious moment during each solar cycle offers an eerily precise window into predicting space weather chaos years before it arrives.
On July 22, 1962, Mariner 1 was destroyed 293 seconds after launch because a single missing symbol in its guidance code — a mark smaller than a grain of rice — sent the rocket chasing phantom course corrections. Arthur C. Clarke called it the most expensive hyphen in history.
On Titan, the laws of physics conspire to make the impossible routine: humans could pedal through an alien sky while robots descend with ease.
Understanding the Sun's true nature—as plasma rather than burning gas—reshapes how we grasp stellar physics and the fundamental forces driving our solar system.
When Proxima Centauri erupts, it briefly outshines billions of stars—a cosmic reminder that proximity is not destiny.
A billion-dollar exoplanet hunter must prove it won't sabotage itself when all systems fire simultaneously in the void.
Decades of cosmic detective work unravels when a mysterious radio structure turns out to be much closer—and far less dramatic—than astronomers believed.
The Soviets sent a probe to Venus expecting minutes. It kept working long enough to rewrite planetary science.
For 48 minutes of every 2-hour orbit, Michael Collins flew alone behind the Moon, cut off from Earth and his crewmates by 2,000 miles of rock — the most physically isolated human being in history, and by his own account not lonely but quietly content.
