Jonathan McDowell is retiring from studying the universe. But he’s ramping up efforts to chronicle humanity’s exploration of space.

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Using samples gathered from the Chang’e-6 mission, scientists found that the interior of the moon on the half we never see from Earth might be drier than the near side.

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Lauren Sánchez teamed up with Monse to redesign the Blue Origin flight suits with its all-female launch in mind.

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The spacecraft are the online giant’s entry into beaming wireless service from space, but the company has much to do before it can compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.

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Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who has twice launched to orbit in a SpaceX vehicle, faced pointed questions from senators of both parties before the Senate on Wednesday.

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There’s more to the universe than meets the eye, he found. His studies led astronomy to the dark side, changing our view of what’s out there.

It’s the most energetic particle of its kind ever discovered, and scientists have no idea where it came from.

The European Space Agency (ESA) said Monday that its Euclid space telescope has detected a rare bright halo of light around a nearby galaxy.

Known as an Einstein ring, the halo was captured in photos encircling a galaxy nearly 590 million light-years away, which is considered close by cosmic standards. A single light-year is measured at 5.8 trillion miles.

While astronomers have known about the galaxy where the phenomenon was captured for over a century, they were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, 

Euclid blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 1, 2023, to begin a six-year mission to explore the dark universe.

GIANT STELLAR NURSERY REVEALED IN NEW IMAGES FROM ESA'S SPACE TELESCOPE

But before the space telescope could begin its survey of the universe, scientists had to ensure everything onboard was working properly. During the early phase of testing, which took place in September 2023, Euclid sent images back to Earth.

The ESA said the images were deliberately out of focus, but in one of the images, Euclid Archive Scientist Bruno Altieri saw what he believed was a very special phenomenon and decided to look at it a bit closer.

"I look at the data from Euclid as it comes in," Bruno said in a press release from the ESA. "Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring. For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing."

For most of the population out there, an Einstein Ring is an "extremely rare phenomenon," the ESA said.

POWERFUL WEBB TELESCOPE SPIES SPECTACULAR STAR BIRTH CLUSTER BEYOND THE MILKY WAY

When a distant galaxy is observed through a telescope, the light from that galaxy may encounter another galaxy on its way to the telescope. When that happens, the foreground galaxy acts like a magnifying glass, and gravity causes the traveling light rays to bend. When light rays bend, scientists call that gravitational lensing, according to the ESA.

When the background galaxy, lensing galaxy and telescope are in perfect alignment, the image appears as a ring, also known as an Einstein Ring.

The galaxy, called NGC 6506, is about 590 million light-years away, and this is the first time the ring of light around its center has ever been detected.

"All strong lenses are special, because they're so rare, and they're incredibly useful scientifically," Conor O’Riordan of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said. "This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful."

POWERFUL WEBB TELESCOPE CAPTURES PHOTOS OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST SUPERNOVA EVER SEEN

Einstein rings are based on physicist Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which predicts that light will bend around objects in space, so they focus the light like giant lenses, ESA said. The phenomenon allows scientists to sometimes see the light from distant galaxies that would otherwise be hidden.

"I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884," Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid project scientist, said. "The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities."

Over the course of the mission, scientists expect Euclid will reveal more about the role of gravity in the Universe, as well as the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Euclid will map over a third of the sky and observe billions of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away, ESA said. In doing so, scientists expect Euclid to find around 100,000 more strong lenses, though finding one so cosmically close to home and so spectacular, ESA added, "is astonishing."

"Euclid is going to revolutionize the field, with all this data we've never had before," O’Riordan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Trump’s executive order is altering scientific exploration across a broad swath of fields, even beyond government agencies, researchers say.

NASA and European scientists explain how they calculate the probability of the space rock 2024 YR4 impacting our planet, and why it’s not yet time to worry.

After the space agency canceled its VIPER rover, an empty space was available on a private spacecraft that will still head to the lunar surface.

The government space agency has vocally promoted diversity and inclusion for decades, even during the first Trump administration.

Researchers say there’s a 1.3 percent chance that the space rock 2024 YR4 could strike our planet — but not until December 2032.

Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose.

The founder of SpaceX said President Trump had asked his company to return two astronauts aboard the space station to Earth “as soon as possible.” NASA said it would do that “as soon as practical.”

Elon Musk’s sense of humor is out of this world. 

Seven years after the SpaceX CEO launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit, astronomers from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts confused it with an asteroid earlier this month. 

A day after the astronomers with the Minor Planet Center registered 2018 CN41, it was deleted on Jan. 3 when they revealed that it was in fact Musk’s roadster. 

The center said on its website that 2018 CN41’s registry was deleted after "it was pointed out the orbit matches an artificial object, 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster. The designation2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted."

 DEBRIS FROM SPACEX STARSHIP STREAKS THROUGH THE SKY

SpaceX launched the Tesla Roadster on the maiden flight of SpaceX's huge Falcon Heavy rocket in February 2018. 

The roadster was expected to go into elliptical orbit around the sun, going a little beyond Mars and back toward Earth, but it apparently exceeded the orbit of Mars and kept going to the asteroid belt, according to Musk at the time. 

When the roadster was mistaken for an asteroid earlier this month, it was less than 150,000 miles from Earth, which is closer than the moon’s orbit, according to Astronomy Magazine, meaning that astronomers would want to monitor how close it gets to Earth. 

POWERFUL WEBB TELESCOPE CAPTURES PHOTOS OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST SUPERNOVA EVER SEEN

Center for Astrophysics (CfA) astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Astronomy magazine that the mistake shows the issues with untracked objects. 

"Worst case, you spend a billion launching a space probe to study an asteroid and only realize it’s not an asteroid when you get there," he said.

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Fox News Digital has reached out to SpaceX for comment. 

Scientists think a small rock discovered near Earth last August was hurled into space by an ancient impact on the lunar surface.

The president’s Inaugural Address linked landing on the Red Planet with Manifest Destiny, but left many of the specifics unclear.

Home security-camera footage shows a puff of smoke, with the sound of an explosion included, as the space rock lands in Canada. A geologist said it was a rare recording.

While Elon Musk’s spaceflight company repeated a spectacular catch of its powerful booster stage, the upper stage experienced a catastrophic malfunction.