The European-Japanese Mercury mission, BepiColombo, completed its first flyby last night, sweeping near Earth. The gravity assist fine-tuned the craft's trajectory. BepiColombo's images during the flyby show Earth shining in darkness.

BepiColombo - a joint mission of Europe and Japan - successfully passed Earth last night and is now headed toward the innermost part of the solar system. Here are some questions about our sun's innermost planet, Mercury, the spacecraft is expected to answer.

Updated April 9, 2020. African Americans more likely to get COVID-19. What’s next after stay-at-home orders are lifted? Worries about a global “poverty tsunami." Coronavirus arrived in New York from Europe. Tweets from the frontlines. More.

The next several mornings, after sunrise, present the perfect time to catch a daytime moon over your western horizon after sunrise.

BepiColombo is a spacecraft on a roundabout journey to Mercury. It'll sweep near Earth tonight, using Earth as a gravity slingshot to send it hurtling toward the inner solar system. For most of us, BepiColombo will pass unseen. But people with telescopes might spot it! Charts and more here.

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) has been fainter during the last few nights. It's possible it's disintegrating (as comets sometimes do). Details here.

Since March 14, ozone over Earth's Arctic has decreased to what's normally considered ‘ozone hole levels.' Scientists expect this year's Arctic hole - the largest ever seen over the Arctic - to close again around mid-April 2020.

With water dropping 150 meters (490 feet) through a thick patch of cloud forest, San Rafael Waterfall was one of Ecuador's most captivating landscapes and attracted tens of thousands of visitors per year. But on February 2, the water stopped flowing.

Watch for the biggest supermoon of the year to shine all night long. It lights up the eastern sky at dusk/nightfall April 7, climbs highest up for the night around midnight and sets in the west around sunrise April 8.

This newly discovered fossil is a hugely important find, say scientists. It means that one of our earliest ancestors possibly originated in southern Africa. Read more