Space, science, and the human mind. Since 1995.

When researchers analyzed how 35,000 Americans spent their days, more free time tracked with greater happiness but only up to a point, after which extra empty hours appeared to make people feel worse, not better

Ask almost anyone what they want more of and the answer comes back fast: time. Time off, time away, time without the calendar dictating the shape of the day.

By Mal James · Jun 9, 2026

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On June 5, five astronauts sheltered inside a SpaceX Dragon while a Russian tunnel on the ISS lost about two pounds of air a day, after NASA objected to a repair plan that meant cutting a bracket near the suspected crack

Five of the seven people aboard the International Space Station moved into the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon on June 5 while a leak in the station's Russian segment was losing about two pounds of air a day.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 9, 2026

When economists paid about 2,800 Facebook users to deactivate their accounts for four weeks, the participants reported greater life satisfaction, more time with family, and lower political polarization — and yet, when the experiment ended, most of them returned to Facebook anyway.

In 2018, in the weeks before the US midterm elections, a team of economists led by Hunt Allcott of New York University and Matthew Gentzkow…

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 9, 2026

Climate Science

The town of Mawsynram in northeastern India receives roughly 11,872 millimetres of rain a year, so much that residents weave body-length shields called knups from bamboo and banana leaf to walk hands-free through downpours that can last weeks without pause.

Mawsynram, a cluster of villages perched on a limestone ridge in the Indian state of Meghalaya, is often cited as one of the wettest inhabited places on Earth, competing with its neighbour Cherrapunji for the distinction.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 9, 2026

The smell that fills the air during the first rainfall after a dry spell is called petrichor, and it comes from plant oils, soil bacteria, and a molecule the human nose can detect at almost unbelievable concentrations

Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Thomas, two researchers working at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Melbourne, gave the smell of first rain its name in a 1964 paper.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 9, 2026

Human Behaviour

It takes about 50 hours of contact for two adults to feel like casual friends, 90 hours before they cross into actual friendship, and more than 200 before someone earns the title of close friend — according to research by Jeffrey Hall, in numbers that quietly explain why most adults find it so hard to make new friends past a certain age.

The University of Kansas communication researcher Jeffrey Hall set out to answer a deceptively simple question in 2018: how many hours, in concrete terms, does it actually take to make a friend?

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 9, 2026

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Mind & Meaning

The psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes — and what frontier life teaches us about being human.

Sunsets on Mars glow blue rather than red, because the fine dust suspended in its thin air scatters sunlight so that the blue gathers into a halo around the setting sun while the rest of the sky stays yellow and orange, leaving the planet that looks rusty all day to end it with a cool blue glow.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The Andromeda galaxy is the most distant thing you can see with the naked eye, and the light reaching your eyes from it tonight left some 2.5 million years ago, long before our own species existed.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Glass frogs can turn much of their body see-through while they sleep by pulling almost all of their red blood cells out of circulation and storing them in their liver, then releasing them again when they wake and need to move.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The human body gives off a faint glow of visible light, produced by ordinary chemical reactions inside living cells. It is real light, but it is far too weak to see: roughly a thousand times below the sensitivity of the naked eye, so to us the body appears completely dark.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe.

Climate Science

The town of Mawsynram in northeastern India receives roughly 11,872 millimetres of rain a year, so much that residents weave body-length shields called knups from bamboo and banana leaf to walk hands-free through downpours that can last weeks without pause.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The smell that fills the air during the first rainfall after a dry spell is called petrichor, and it comes from plant oils, soil bacteria, and a molecule the human nose can detect at almost unbelievable concentrations

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The Pando aspen grove in Utah looks like 47,000 separate trees, but every trunk is a genetically identical clone connected by a single underground root system weighing roughly 6,000 tons, making it possibly the heaviest living organism on Earth and at least 14,000 years old.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The DNA in a single human cell, if stretched into a single thin line, would extend approximately 2 meters — and the total DNA in your entire body, if connected end to end, would stretch from Earth to the Sun and back roughly 245 times, all packed into cells so small that tens of thousands of them would fit on the head of a pin

By Space Daily Editorial Team

About Space Daily

Space, science, and the human side of the frontier. Since 1995.

Space Daily is an independent publication covering three connected beats: the space industry, the science behind it, and the psychology of ambition, isolation, and meaning under extremes. Founded in Tokyo in 1995, we’ve built a thirty-year archive of rigorous reporting on the people, missions, and ideas pushing humanity outward — and on the human dynamics shaped by frontier life. The same ambitions, pressures, and patterns of mind that drive humanity to the stars also shape how we live on Earth. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

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