Boeing's Starliner capsule had a helium leak in one of its thrusters, but it is still scheduled to launch on 1 June for its first crewed flight to the International Space Station

Landing on the far side of the moon is rarely attempted, due to difficulties communicating with Earth, but China is about to try. If successful, its Chang'e 6 mission will then bring lunar samples back home

We asked New Scientist staff to pick their favourite science fiction books. Here are the results, ranging from 19th-century classics to modern day offerings, and from Octavia E. Butler to Iain M. Banks

A star in a distant galaxy appears to have been almost torn apart in a close shave with a supermassive black hole, not once but twice – and astronomers hope to see it happen again

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its massive Starship rocket, perhaps as soon as 5 June, and we have all the details on the mission

Mars is a planet much beloved and much maligned, and in this episode of Dead Planets Society it is getting a dramatic makeover via an enormous orbiting magnet

Observations made by the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s include signs of recent lava flows, highlighting possible exploration targets for probes heading to Venus in the 2030s

If our solar system and even our sun contain tiny black holes formed just after the big bang, they should be orbiting in elaborate patterns

A nearby planet named Gliese 12 b has an estimated surface temperature of 42°C (108°F), making it a promising candidate for liquid water and maybe life

The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope has taken images of galaxies, galaxy clusters and newborn stars in unprecedented detail

Long summer nights are the perfect time to see the electric blue wisps of these "night shining" clouds, which create patterns like the aurora, says Abigail Beall

Scientists have long thought the source of the sun's magnetic field sat deep within the star, but it may exist in a far more convenient spot for us to observe it

Estimates suggest there are trillions of free-floating worlds in our galaxy alone. Most of them will be frozen planets like Pluto, but some might be warmer – and possibly even habitable

For the first time, astronomers have observed the area right at the edge of a black hole where matter stops orbiting and plunges straight in at near light speed

Gravitational waves can be lensed by massive galaxies so that they repeat, like an echo. Scientists are now readying to snare their first one and explore the cosmic secrets it holds

Galaxies could do with a few more arms or some decorative designs – on this episode of Dead Planets Society, our hosts are using collisions, black holes and dark matter to reshape our galaxy

A white dwarf star orbiting a sun-like star was thought to be impossibly small, but now astronomers have found another star in the system that solves the puzzle

A rare geomagnetic storm not seen for nearly 20 years could cause a stunning aurora borealis on 10 and 11 May

Sufficiently advanced aliens would be able to capture vast quantities of energy from their star using a massive structure called a Dyson sphere. Such a device would give off an infrared heat signature - and astronomers have just spotted 60 stars that seem to match

Surprising recent measurements hint that the universe isn’t expanding in the way we had thought, and it could be explained by still-theoretical dark radiation