TESS watched a black hole tear apart a star from start to finish, a cataclysmic phenomenon called a tidal disruption event.

… and it’s poised to find thousands more. But will we find another Earth?

Exoplanets – worlds orbiting distant suns – are very, very far away. Astronomers are learning what some might look like, and what’s in their atmospheres. Soon – for the first time – a new telescope will be able to “see inside” some exoplanets.

Scientists working with the Curiosity rover have found salt-enriched rock at a place called Sutton Island on Mars. The rocks suggest ponds with briny water on Mars, billions of years ago.

Astronomers have found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn, bringing the planet’s total number of moons to 82. That surpasses Jupiter, which has 79.

Astronomers probed the cosmic web, a large-scale structure composed of massive filaments of galaxies separated by giant voids. They found the filaments also contained significant amounts of gas, believed to help fuel the galaxies’ growth.

NASA is testing a 3D-printed prototype of unusual mini robots that can roll, fly, float and swim, then morph into a single machine. They’re called Shapeshifters. The team envisions them as a way to explore Saturn’s moons.

For decades, astronomical theorists have told us that a black hole’s powerful gravity would warp the space around it. This new visualization from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the best yet at showing exactly how.

Take one minute to watch a video of a system of 3 galaxies – called SDSS J0849+1114 – all orbiting each other a billion light years from Earth. Each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole, which are circling each other, about to collide.