Mars insight

Ten years ago, Pluto emerged from the gloom at the Solar System’s ragged edge – and a new world came in from the cold. Five billion kilometres (3 billion miles) from Earth, on 14 July 2015, NASA’s pia

The best discoveries, inventions and surprises

The prospect of life on Mars – Earth’s planetary next-door neighbour, an alien world that betrays tantalising hints of a watery past – has bewitched humanity for centuries. From the ‘canals’ seen by a

You’re woken in the middle of the night by an urgent phone call. An asteroid is headed straight for Earth and it’s your job to find out if it’ll strike the planet and rain destruction down upon us all

Flammarion is an inconspicuous walled plain near the centre of the Moon’s disc. On the Earth-facing side of the lunar surface, there are two great crater ‘chains’ containing three large craters. On th

A Matterhorn, a pyramid, a dragon’s back: the peaks of Eryri strike some incredible poses.