NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission has mapped interstellar ice at an unprecedented scale. Covering regions in our Milky Way galaxy more than 600 light-years across, the ice was found inside giant molecular clouds — vast regions of gas and dust where dense clumps of […]
The Artemis II crew captured this photo of our galaxy, the Milky Way, on April 7, 2026. The Milky Way’s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, about […]
The broadest planned survey by NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will reveal hundreds of millions of galaxies scattered across the cosmos. After Roman launches as soon as this fall, scientists will use these sparkly beacons to study the universe’s shadowy underpinnings: dark matter and dark energy. “We set out to build the ultimate […]
At the heart of our own galaxy, there is a dense thicket of stars with a supermassive black hole at the very center. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide the deepest-ever view of this zone, revealing stars, planets, and unique objects that resist definition. Based on the input of astronomers from across the […]