On the night of 5-6 December, a very special package landed in the South Australian desert region of Woomera. It contained samples of dust brought back from asteroid Ryugu, after a long journey by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. These tiny grains of material should...
The TARANIS satellite is scheduled to launch from Kourou (French Guiana) in November in order to study the luminous phenomena that occur above thunderstorms. The objective of the French mission, which will for the first time carry out an exhaustive, long-term...
This year’s CNRS Gold Medal has been awarded to Françoise Combes. Her work as an astrophysicist has enabled her to identify molecules in the far reaches of the Universe and unveil the secrets of galaxies and dark matter, making her one of the leading...
Virgo and LIGO have just announced the detection of gravitational waves produced by the oldest and most massive source ever observed. The discovery reveals the existence of a class of black holes that had never before been detected, and could explain how...
On February 10, the European spacecraft Solar Orbiter will launch and head for the Sun, with the aim of unravelling some of the mysteries surrounding the physics of our star.
A quarter of a century after the discovery of the first extrasolar planet, the CHEOPS space telescope will finally enable researchers to determine what exoplanets are made of.
Fifty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk, scientific instruments deployed on the Moon's surface continue to supply valuable data to scientists. Using these reflectors...