The Webb Telescope is Hubble's successor, due to launch in 2021. A new study says it'll be powerful enough to search for life signatures in the atmospheres of the 7 Earth-sized planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, just 39 light-years away.

On August 28, 2019, NASA announced that the 2 halves of the James Webb Space Telescope have now been successfully connected. The telescope is being assembled at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California.

Previous studies showed that methane in Mars' atmosphere varies across the Martian seasons. New research shows daily fluctuations. It's fascinating because, on Earth, methane gas is tied to microbial life.

This image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope shows star death. It's a planetary nebula in the direction of the constellation Gemini the Twins.

We had a new moon on August 30, 2019. A number of people around the world are likely to catch the whisker-thin waxing crescent after sunset August 31. On the evenings after that, the moon will stay out longer after sunset and become easier to see.

Today - August 30, 2019 - presents the closest new moon of the year, exactly a fortnight (about 2 weeks) before the year's farthest and smallest full moon on September 14, 2019.

The Mars 2020 rover, scheduled for launch next July, doesn't have a name yet. A NASA contest invites U.S. students grades K–12 to suggest names for the rover.

Rather than leaving home young, as expected, star siblings are more likely to stick together in long-lasting, string-like star groups, according to a new study of data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft.

By late August and early September, the constellation Orion is rising in the hours after midnight and is well up by dawn. It'll continue to rise earlier … and earlier.

NEOs are near-Earth objects, asteroids and small comets that sweep near Earth and have the potential to cause harm. Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has, since the 1990s, been finding about 60 to 120 of these objects every year.