When the Gaia space telescope launches next week, it's going to attempt the biggest astronomy project of all time: it will try and scan the entire sky, capturing images of at least a billion stars in our galaxy. Read More >>

This beautiful tracking video shows Asteroid 2013 XY8 buzzing by our planet on Tuesday night. It's estimated to be up to 230 feet across, more than three times the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid that caused havoc earlier this year. And we only discovered it four days ago. This could have been hairy. Read More >>

US aerospace company Lockheed Martin has joined the Mars One project, with the developer of the successful NASA Phoenix lander signing up to build the critical landing pod for the private Mars mission. Read More >>

In November 2014, after travelling 10 years and hundreds of millions of miles, a European spacecraft will touch down on a two-and-a-half-mile-wide ball of ice and dust as it hurtles through space towards the sun. And if all goes according to plan, this unprecedented feat could finally give us what we need to understand the origins of life on Earth. It's just the "according to plan" that's the tricky part. Read More >>

The possibility that Mars was once home to all kinds of life is looking better and better with each new Curiosity discovery. According to newly published research, the rover has stumbled across a site in the Gale Crater that scientists believe might have once been a lake full of life. Read More >>

As nations around the world launch more and more satellites into geosynchronous orbit above the Earth, the danger of them accidentally colliding and creating a Gravity-esque cascade of destruction increases exponentially. To keep tabs on everything zooming around 22,000 miles above the surface, DARPA's developed this keen-eyed space surveillance telescope. Read More >>

You've probably never lent Mars's northern pole a great deal of thought, but you can explore it in wonderful 3D glory in this ESA video. Read More >>

The first of London-based Inmarsat's Global Xpress satellites has launched from the Baikonaur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with the aim being to provide a faster global network of broadband for governments, businesses, ships and aeroplanes by the end of 2014. Read More >>

Recent mover and shaker Moon Express wants to send a robotic spacecraft to the moon in 2015. CEO Bob Richards says that the MX-1 will use scientific instruments and sensors to study resources that are limited on Earth but "available in infinite quantities in space." Read More >>

The city of Boca do Acre is a beautiful place to live, almost completely covered by the Amazon Rainforest—for now. Because you shouldn't be fooled by the pretty colours in this image: it actually reveals the rapid rate of deforestation in the area. Read More >>

For all the futuristic advancements packed into modern space-based telescopes, they all still rely on the same bulky, heavy glass optics that Galileo used centuries ago. But thanks to this DARPA project, future telescopes could eventually use optics as thin as saran wrap to peer into deep space. Read More >>

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which caused the tsunami behind the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, disrupted more than man-made structures. The European Space Agency's GOCE satellite measured a significant change in Earth's gravity after the earthquake before falling out of the sky on November 11th. Read More >>

Just a decade after entering the space race, China is headed to the moon. With the successful launch of a Long March rocket carrying the Chang'e 3 lunar lander earlier this morning, China is attempting to become the third nation in history to land (rather than crash) a spacecraft on the lunar surface. Read More >>

Russia's SAR-400 robotic cosmonaut—which bears some significant similarity to NASA's Robonaut—is in practice for its first ever space walk. But don't worry, because it will be controlled from afar, just like in this picture. Read More >>

There may well be more than 60 billion habitable planets littering the Milky Way, but it's virtually impossible to make use of that figure. Instead, how about this picture, which shows you how many planets are within 60 light-years of Earth. Read More >>