Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Outer Space

A supermoon rises over Washington, D.C., on December 3, 2017.

The Year’s First Bright Supermoon and the Colorful Quadrantid Meteor Shower Coincide This Weekend

The dual celestial events will ring in the new year, although the luminous “wolf” supermoon may hamper skywatchers’ view of the shooting stars

Look up throughout the year to catch a wide array of astronomical sights.

Don’t Miss These Ten Celestial Events in 2026, From Aligned Planets to a Total Solar Eclipse

The upcoming year will offer a blood-red moon, spectacular meteor showers and the first glimpse of the sun’s corona since April 2024

Michaela "Michi" Benthaus in the center with her five crewmates

This Aerospace Engineer Just Became the First Wheelchair User to Travel to Space

A brief commercial flight with space tourism company Blue Origin made Michaela “Michi” Benthaus’ childhood dream come true

An artistic representation of exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b, on the left, and the pulsar it orbits, on the right

This Lemon-Shaped Planet Has an Atmosphere Unlike Anything Astronomers Have Ever Seen

The James Webb Space Telescope detected an atmosphere rich with carbon and helium, which is unexpected on this hot planet roughly 2,000 light-years from Earth

In 2025, researchers watched an interstellar comet, learned about human origins and traced the spread of measles.

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2025, From Medical Breakthroughs to an Interstellar Visitor

All year long, these moments captivated the public, demonstrated dangerous trends, and pushed research and innovation forward

Six infrared images of Titan created with data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft

Saturn’s Moon Titan May Not Have an Underground Ocean After All

A new analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may upend Titan’s status as an ocean world. But it might still have pockets of water within a slushy ice layer

David Rankin, operations manager at the Catalina Sky Survey, keeps tabs on space rocks in search of new and potentially hazardous asteroids.

From a Remote Observatory, He’s Defending Our Planet. Get a Glimpse Inside the Life of a Doomsday Asteroid Hunter

David Rankin of the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spends nights scanning the solar system for potentially catastrophic space rocks. Here’s what he has to say about that “high consequence” work, an interstellar comet and living with uncertainty

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which is investigating a group of asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the sun, snapped this image on September 16 as 3I/ATLAS approached Mars. 

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is About to Make Its Closest Approach to Earth. Here’s How to View It With Binoculars or a Telescope

On December 19, avid skywatchers can catch a glimpse of the mysterious visitor through powerful binoculars or a telescope when it’s around 170 million miles from our home planet

Time passes by faster on Mars than on Earth.

How to Keep Time on Mars: Clocks on the Red Planet Would Tick a Bit Differently Than Those on Earth

On average, Martian time ticks roughly 477 millionths of a second faster than terrestrial clocks per Earth day. But the Red Planet’s elongated orbit causes the time difference to vary as Mars travels around the sun

Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, which sits within the Milky Way

Astrophysicists Found an Abundance of Odd Elements Essential for Life in the Leftovers of an Exploded Star

The surprisingly high amounts of chlorine and potassium in a supernova remnant could help solve the mystery of where these crucial elements come from

The Geminid meteor shower in 2017

The Year’s Best and Brightest Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend. Here’s How to Watch the Radiant Geminids

A waning crescent moon should make for a fairly dark sky, allowing viewers to see up to 150 shooting stars per hour

Astronauts Tom Stafford (left) and Wally Schirra (right) demonstrating with two model space crafts during an interview in the 1960s

Sixty Years Ago, When Instruments Were Played in Space for the First Time, It Was ‘Jingle Bells’ All the Way

Astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra delighted mission control with their rendition of the Christmas classic

An image simulating the contamination from satellite trails in observations by ARRAKIHS, a European Space Agency telescope planned to launch in 2030

More Than 500,000 Satellites Are Set to Orbit Earth by 2040. They May End Up Photobombing the Images Captured by Space Telescopes

Fleets of satellites interfere with snapshots taken by Earth-bound observatories. But a new study suggests these orbiters will also contaminate observations by four space telescopes, including Hubble

Earth’s magnetic field surrounds the planet, with illustrated field lines emerging from the north, in orange, and looping around to the south, in blue.

A Weak Spot in Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Growing, but Scientists Say Not to Worry. Here’s a Look at What Shields Us From Space Weather

Our planet’s magnetosphere has seen dramatic shifts across its history—even total reversals—but this recent wrinkle doesn’t pose a threat to life

None

The Astronomical Problem of Space Junk

Chunks of satellites and pieces of debris falling from space are causing trouble down here on Earth

A supermoon in December 2017

Look Up This Week to See the Bright ‘Cold’ Moon, the Last Supermoon of the Year

December’s full moon will reach peak brightness on Thursday, but it will look striking for the next few nights—especially when it’s just above the horizon

A long-exposure view of the Milky Way, seen from Brandenburg, Germany, is cut through by the light trails of passing satellites.

Giant Mirrors in Space Could Bring Sunlight After Dark, One Startup Says—and Astronomers Are Concerned

Critics argue the satellites, billed as a way to harness solar energy at night, could hamper sky observations and may pose a threat to human and animal health

Smithsonian magazine's picks for the best books about science in 2025 include Replaceable You, Dinner With King Tut and North to the Future.

The Best Books of 2025

The Ten Best Science Books of 2025

From “experimental archaeology” to the mysterious appeal of exploration, the wide-ranging subjects detailed in these titles captivated Smithsonian magazine’s science contributors this year

An artist's impression of the collision between the early Earth and Theia, which may have formed the moon

A Planet Slammed Into Earth 4.5 Billion Years Ago, Forming the Moon. The Projectile May Have Been Our Neighbor

Little is known about the long-destroyed moon-forming planet, Theia. But it may have been born in the inner solar system—just like Earth—a new study suggests

The moss spores germinated after enduring space outside of the ISS.

Moss Spores Survived Nine Months Outside the International Space Station. Then, They Grew Normally on Earth

While lunar gardens are still out of reach, the study sheds more light on terrestrial biology that may not be limited to our planet’s surface

Page 6 of 89