2020 has been an exciting year so far for SETI - the search for extraterrestrial life - in terms of new technological developments and strategies.

A new study of unusual ripples on Pluto's far side add to the evidence for a subsurface ocean on this distant and cold dwarf planet.

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.

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.

As unlikely as it may sound, Mercury may have once been able to support subsurface microscopic life, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute.

Dark energy is one of the great unsolved mysteries of cosmology. It's now thought to make up 68% of everything in the universe.

They're called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. Astronomers analyzed data from the Dark Energy Survey - which just completed 6 years of observations - to find over 100 new little worlds in the cold outer reaches of our solar system.

Astronomers using the Hubble Telescope found that the region around a quasar's black hole pushes out material at a few percent the speed of light. These quasar tsunamis wreak havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars live.