What we found up there this year. Plain English, with sources.
What did we discover in space in 2026? A new telescope spotted 2026 ED138, a world maybe 1,000 km wide hiding beyond Pluto. Four Artemis II astronauts flew around the Moon and saw it flash, and NASA made their notes public. A PhD student found a comet in Euclid's photos by accident. Swift, built for 2 years, worked for 22 and is now falling home. And four volunteers spent 378 days on a fake Mars in Houston. Every story below links to its sources.
It's called 2026 ED138 for now. It sat in front of the Milky Way's crowd of stars, which is why nobody spotted it. If confirmed, it joins a tiny family of dwarf planets.
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Swift chased the biggest blasts in the universe since 2004. A robot tried to rescue it and ran out of fuel. Now it's slowly falling home.
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Europe's Euclid space telescope is supposed to map the dark universe. A PhD student in Helsinki ran his own little program over its photos and spotted a blurry streak. It's a brand-new comet, now called C/2026 S1 (Euclid).
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No shops, no quick calls home, the same three faces every morning for 378 days. On 31 October four volunteers finally open the door. Here's what a year of pretend Mars looks like.
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The first people near the Moon in over 50 years didn't just take selfies. They took notes, in coloured pen, and NASA has just made it all public.
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