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

A total solar eclipse is only possible because of a cosmic coincidence: the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun but also about 400 times closer, making the two look almost the same size from Earth. But the Moon is slowly drifting away, so this alignment will not last forever. One day, hundreds of millions of years from now, the last total solar eclipse will pass across the planet, and no one will ever see the Moon fully cover the Sun again.

A total solar eclipse rests on a coincidence that is simple to state and still hard to quite accept.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · Jun 1, 2026

Latest

All articles →

The Moon looks white in the night sky, but its surface is closer in color to a worn asphalt road — and it appears bright enough to read by on a clear night not because the surface is bright, but because the Moon is so close and fully sunlit that even a surface reflecting just 12 percent of incoming light becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky

The Moon looks white in the night sky, sometimes silver, sometimes yellow or orange when it sits low on the horizon.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

When Zhang Chenxing, who holds a PhD from MIT, co-founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi'an in early 2024, China's high-pressure oxygen-rich staged-combustion know-how sat almost entirely inside state propulsion houses — and by May 2026 his startup had logged 1,000 seconds of accumulated test time on a closed-cycle kerolox engine

Roughly two years after it opened its doors, a Xi'an commercial startup called Mega Engine Technology has announced that a single…

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

The leading explanation for how the Moon was born is that a world the size of Mars called Theia slammed into the young Earth and flung out the debris that became the Moon, and recent research suggests Theia itself never fully left, with two continent-sized blobs buried near our planet's core possibly being the last remains of the world that struck us.

The leading account of where the Moon came from is a collision. Early in the Solar System's history, a young planet roughly the size of Mars, given the name Theia, is thought to have struck the proto-Earth a glancing blow.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

Magnetic reversals are real and common over geological time, but they do not run on a neat schedule.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

Earth Observation

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

The Interislander ferry between Wellington and Picton carries tourists, freight trucks, and commuters across a stretch of the Cook Strait most of them assume is just water between two New Zealand islands.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 31, 2026

What’s up in

Mind & Meaning

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

A total solar eclipse is only possible because of a cosmic coincidence: the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun but also about 400 times closer, making the two look almost the same size from Earth. But the Moon is slowly drifting away, so this alignment will not last forever. One day, hundreds of millions of years from now, the last total solar eclipse will pass across the planet, and no one will ever see the Moon fully cover the Sun again.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The leading explanation for how the Moon was born is that a world the size of Mars called Theia slammed into the young Earth and flung out the debris that became the Moon, and recent research suggests Theia itself never fully left, with two continent-sized blobs buried near our planet's core possibly being the last remains of the world that struck us.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The Moon is stealing time from the Earth, and it has been getting away with it for billions of years. Our planet spins so much slower than it once did that a single day has stretched from just 19 hours to the 24 we live by, and the Moon is still creeping away from us right now.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

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

A total solar eclipse is only possible because of a cosmic coincidence: the Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun but also about 400 times closer, making the two look almost the same size from Earth. But the Moon is slowly drifting away, so this alignment will not last forever. One day, hundreds of millions of years from now, the last total solar eclipse will pass across the planet, and no one will ever see the Moon fully cover the Sun again.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

The Moon looks white in the night sky, but its surface is closer in color to a worn asphalt road — and it appears bright enough to read by on a clear night not because the surface is bright, but because the Moon is so close and fully sunlit that even a surface reflecting just 12 percent of incoming light becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth's magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, swapping magnetic north and south in a switch locked into ancient rock, and it happens on no fixed schedule, yet nothing in the record suggests a single flip ever wiped out life.

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Earth Observation

Zealandia, the submerged continent geologists confirmed in 2017, is 94 percent underwater and stretches nearly two million square miles beneath the South Pacific, yet its modern name was quietly proposed by geophysicist Bruce Luyendyk in 1995

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.

More about us →