SpaceX's Falcon 9 Was the First Orbital Rocket to Land Itself and Fly Again
Rockets were always single-use, burned up or dumped in the ocean after one flight. Falcon 9 broke that rule — landing upright and relaunching within weeks.
The Fact Archive
Black Holes & Cosmic ExtremesCosmic MysteriesSolar System SecretsMissions & Space HistoryLife & the Universe
July 2026
Near a Black Hole, One Hour Can Equal Seven Years — and It's Not Fiction
Interstellar's famous time-slip is real physics. Clocks genuinely run slower in strong gravity — your GPS corrects for it every second.
The Boötes Void: A Hole in the Universe 330 Million Light-Years Wide
A region that should contain tens of thousands of galaxies holds barely 60. If the Milky Way sat at its center, we wouldn't have known other galaxies existed.
Starship Is the Largest, Most Powerful Rocket Ever Built
SpaceX's Starship stands 121 metres tall and produces roughly twice the thrust of the Saturn V that sent astronauts to the Moon.
Mercury Is Shrinking — the Whole Planet Is Getting Smaller
As its giant iron core cools, Mercury contracts, wrinkling its crust into cliffs hundreds of kilometers long. The planet has lost up to 14 km of diameter.
Most Active Satellites Orbiting Earth Right Now Belong to One Company
SpaceX's Starlink has launched thousands of satellites since 2019, and they now make up the majority of all active satellites orbiting Earth.
In 2020, a Private Company Launched Humans to Orbit for the First Time
SpaceX's Crew Dragon ended nine years of the US relying on Russian rockets to reach the ISS — and became the first commercial spacecraft ever to carry astronauts.
Jupiter's Moon Europa Hides More Water Than All of Earth's Oceans Combined
Beneath Europa's frozen shell sloshes a salty ocean up to 150 km deep — kept liquid for billions of years and considered the best place to look for alien life.
Your Phone Is Millions of Times More Powerful Than the Computer That Landed on the Moon
The Apollo Guidance Computer had 4KB of RAM and less power than a musical greeting card — and it crashed five times during the Moon landing.
SpaceX Nearly Went Bankrupt — Its Fourth Rocket Launch Ever Saved the Company
The first three Falcon 1 launches all failed. With money almost gone, the fourth launch had to work — and it barely did, keeping SpaceX alive by weeks.
Magnetars: Stars So Magnetic They Would Erase You From 1,000 km Away
A magnetar's field is a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth's — strong enough to distort atoms themselves. One once hit Earth from 50,000 light-years away.
SpaceX Caught a Falling Rocket Booster With Giant Mechanical Arms
Instead of landing legs, Starship's booster is caught in mid-air by the launch tower itself — arms nicknamed 'chopsticks' snatching a 71-metre rocket from the sky.
A Car Is Currently Orbiting the Sun Because of a Rocket Test Launch
SpaceX needed a test payload for Falcon Heavy's 2018 debut, so it launched a Tesla Roadster with a spacesuit-wearing mannequin. It's still out there.
'Oumuamua: The Interstellar Object That Accelerated on Its Way Out
The first visitor from another star system was shaped like nothing we'd seen, had no comet tail — and sped up as it left. Scientists still argue about it.
Mars Has a Volcano So Big You Couldn't See It While Standing On It
Olympus Mons is nearly three times the height of Everest and the size of an entire country — so wide its slopes would hide beyond your horizon.
One Company Now Launches More Rockets Than Most Countries' Entire Space Programs
SpaceX has flown well over a hundred orbital launches in a single year — more than the combined output of nearly every national space agency on Earth.
June 2026
The Universe Should Be Crawling With Aliens. So Where Is Everybody?
Billions of habitable planets, billions of years of time — yet total silence. The Fermi paradox is science's most unsettling unanswered question.
We Only Ever See One Side of the Moon — the Other Was Hidden Until 1959
The Moon is locked so that the same face always points at Earth. Humanity never saw its far side until a Soviet probe photographed it in 1959.
Sunsets on Mars Are Blue — the Exact Opposite of Earth's
On Earth, sunsets glow red and the sky is blue. On Mars it's reversed: the daytime sky is butterscotch, and the Sun sets in a cool blue glow.
We Nailed a Map to Earth on a Spacecraft — Some Scientists Think It Was Reckless
The Pioneer plaque shows two humans and directions to our Sun, drawn for aliens. It sparked a debate that still rages: should we be advertising our address?
The Gold in Your Jewelry Was Forged in a Collision of Dead Stars
In 2017, humanity watched two neutron stars collide — and confirmed that gold, platinum, and uranium are made in these cataclysms, not in ordinary stars.
Pluto Has a Giant Ice Heart — and We Only Saw It Clearly in 2015
For 85 years Pluto was a blurry dot. Then New Horizons flew past and revealed a world with a heart-shaped glacier, ice mountains, and possible hidden ocean.
Something Invisible Is Pulling Our Entire Galaxy Toward It at 2 Million km/h
The Milky Way and thousands of neighboring galaxies are streaming toward a mysterious region called the Great Attractor — hidden behind our own galaxy's disk.
Halley's Comet Returns Every 76 Years — Most People See It Once, If Ever
The most famous comet swings past Earth roughly once a human lifetime. It last appeared in 1986; the next visit is 2061. Mark Twain lived and died by it.
It Literally Rains Diamonds Inside Neptune and Uranus
Thousands of kilometers below the clouds of the ice giants, extreme pressure squeezes carbon into diamonds that fall like hail toward the core.
The Pillars of Creation Are So Far Away They May Already Be Gone
One of the most famous space images shows towering columns of gas birthing stars — 6,500 light-years away, so their light shows us the distant past.
A Nearby Star Could Explode Any Night — and Shine as Bright as the Moon
Betelgeuse, the red shoulder of Orion, is a dying giant. When it goes supernova, it'll be visible in daylight for weeks. It could happen tonight — or in 100,000 years.
The 'Habitable Zone' Is Real — and Billions of Planets Sit Inside One
Around every star is a band where water can stay liquid. Our galaxy alone may hold billions of rocky planets orbiting inside this Goldilocks zone.
Apollo 12 Was Struck by Lightning Twice — 52 Seconds Into Launch
The rocket's systems failed, alarms flooded the cockpit, and one flight controller's obscure command — 'SCE to AUX' — saved the entire Moon mission.
That Faint Band Across a Dark Sky Is You Looking Into Our Own Galaxy
The Milky Way's glowing arch is the combined light of hundreds of billions of stars — our galaxy seen from the inside. A third of humanity can no longer see it.
The Largest Known Black Hole Could Swallow Our Solar System Whole
TON 618 weighs as much as 66 billion Suns. Its event horizon is so vast that light itself needs days to cross a region our entire solar system would vanish into.
Saturn Is Slowly Losing Its Rings — They're Raining Down Onto the Planet
Saturn's iconic rings are being pulled into the planet as a dusty 'ring rain.' On cosmic timescales they're a temporary feature we're lucky to see at all.
Something Is Sending Millisecond Radio Blasts From Across the Universe
Fast radio bursts release more energy in a millisecond than the Sun does in days — and some of them repeat on a schedule. We still don't know why.
Saturn Has a Perfectly Hexagonal Storm Bigger Than Earth
At Saturn's north pole sits a six-sided jet stream 30,000 km across that has held its geometric shape for over 40 years. Nothing else like it exists.
The Only Animal That Has Survived the Naked Vacuum of Space
In 2007, scientists exposed tardigrades to open space — vacuum, radiation, freezing cold. Many of them simply woke up and carried on living.
There's a Mixtape for Aliens Flying Through Interstellar Space Right Now
The Voyager Golden Record carries greetings in 55 languages, whale songs, and Chuck Berry — a message in a bottle meant to outlive Earth itself.
Black Holes Don't Actually Suck Anything In
Replace the Sun with a black hole of equal mass and Earth wouldn't move an inch. The 'cosmic vacuum cleaner' is one of astronomy's biggest myths.
85% of the Universe's Matter Is Missing — and We've Never Seen It
Every star, planet, and galaxy we can see is only a sliver of what exists. The rest is dark matter, and after 90 years we still don't know what it is.
A Single Day on Venus Lasts Longer Than Its Entire Year
Venus takes 243 Earth days to spin once but only 225 to orbit the Sun. On Venus, your birthday comes around faster than sunrise.
A Teaspoon of Neutron Star Weighs About a Billion Tonnes
Neutron stars pack the mass of the Sun into a ball the size of a city. One teaspoon of their matter outweighs every human who has ever lived.
The Wow! Signal: The 72-Second Radio Burst We've Never Heard Again
In 1977, a radio telescope in Ohio caught a signal so strange the astronomer on duty circled it and wrote 'Wow!'. Nearly 50 years later, it has never repeated.
Venus Is Hotter Than Mercury — Even Though Mercury Is Closer to the Sun
Mercury sits twice as close to the Sun, yet Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. The reason is a runaway greenhouse effect gone mad.