Asteroids that regularly fly between Earth, Venus and Mars could provide radiation shielding for human missions to explore neighbouring planets

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

A nearby star that exploded some 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots

Moin Hussain's debut feature film Sky Peals sees a man discover his father may be from outer space. Part sci-fi, part family drama, part coming-of-age tale, it is odd and otherworldly

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

General relativity teaches us that observing a black hole is all a question of perspective – and technique, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The first “failed star” ever discovered has been a weird outlier since it was found nearly 30 years ago. New observations show that it is unusually massive because it isn’t a single star after all

The Euclid space telescope's massive “cosmic atlas” promises to shed light on fundamental questions in physics and cosmology

Meet NASA’s NEO Surveyor, the space telescope identifying hazardous asteroids and comets within 48 million kilometres of Earth’s orbit

A 6000-kilogram spacecraft will embark on a six-year journey to Jupiter to explore whether its icy moon Europa has the conditions to support life

SpaceX claims the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket will happen “within days”, but the Federal Aviation Administration has not yet approved the launch

The ion tail of C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) could appear as a blue streak across the northern hemisphere sky during October, in a rare event thought to happen only every few decades

My first sight of Saturn through a telescope inspired my love of space. Dig out your telescopes or visit your local astronomy club, and you may be lucky enough to spot our sixth planet's stunning thick band of rings, says Leah Crane

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

A detector on the International Space Station found signatures of unexpectedly abundant antimatter – which may have been created in clashes of dark matter particles

Bacteria grown from carbon compounds in asteroids could be turned into a kind of nutritionally balanced milkshake

The European Space Agency is sending a probe to get a closer look at the asteroid Dimorphos, which had its orbit altered by NASA’s DART mission in 2022

The first 18 satellites of a planned Chinese mega constellation are brighter than all but 500 stars in the sky, raising fears of a huge impact on astronomy