Professor Mark Sims on the discovery that Beagle 2 made it to the surface

NASA’s InSight Mars lander has snapped its first selfie on the surface of the red planet, revealing a level, almost featureless plain that’s exactlly the sort of landing site mission scientists wanted.

Early risers wishing to see Venus as a dazzling ‘morning star’ need only glance low to the east in the pre-dawn sky. The planet reaches greatest brilliancy on Sunday, 20 September when, for a couple of mornings, it can be seen outshining brightest nighttime star Sirius in the southeast by a factor of seventeen times. Can you see your shadow cast by Venus?

A new spectroscopic analysis of “Black Beauty,” a 4.4 billion-year-old meteorite found in the Moroccan desert, has given scientists a better picture of the crust beneath Mars’ red dust.