Penitentes – large pointed spikes of ice – are known on Earth and Pluto. Jupiter’s moon Europa might have them, too, according to new research. If they’re there, they could make a future landing on Europa tricky.

Newly-discovered Asteroid 2018 UA made an extremely close approach to Earth on Friday morning. Luckily, the space rock was too small to be dangerous.

NASA is again being encouraged to expand its search for alien life – not just intelligent life – all forms of life, including microbes.

Binary asteroids – that is, asteroids with moons – aren’t uncommon. More than 300 have been discovered so far. Astronomers found a moon for 2018 EB when it swept closest to Earth on October 7.

In 1670, skywatchers saw a nova, a star that appeared where none had been before. Today’s astronomers have learned it was a collision between an aging white dwarf star, and less massive brown dwarf.

For the 1st time, astronomers have detected the faint radio afterglow of a ghost explosion – a kind of cosmic sonic boom – possibly the result of a weird kind of gamma-ray burst.

The European Space Agency’s next big planet-hunting mission – the Plato space telescope – will continue the search for rocky and potentially habitable worlds orbiting other stars.

Last year, in its Grand Finale, the Cassini spacecraft dove repeatedly between Saturn and its rings. This week, 6 teams of researchers published new research based on Cassini’s final days and those daredevil dives.

The Goblin is a very small dwarf planet, very far away. It might help astronomers in their search for a much bigger world – the long-sought Planet X.