Why are so many of us still awake at midnight watching something we don’t even care about? Researchers call it “revenge bedtime procrastination” — a self-regulation failure driven by a need to reclaim the autonomy a demanding day took away

I am not a psychologist or sleep specialist. This piece draws on published research but is not a substitute for professional advice.

By Mal James · May 21, 2026

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Human Behaviour

The international space station has had continuous human presence for over twenty-five years. The daily habits that made that possible are almost embarrassingly ordinary, which is perhaps precisely why they work

What do you imagine is responsible for keeping a human being functional during six months in one of the most extreme environments our species has ever visited?

By Mal James · May 21, 2026

Constellations

When Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev launched to Mir in May 1991, the country that sent him was still the USSR; by the time he returned in March 1992 it no longer existed, his home city of Leningrad had become Saint Petersburg, and even the spaceport that launched him — Baikonur — was now inside newly independent Kazakhstan, forcing Russia to renegotiate access to the machinery of its own space program

Sergei Krikalev launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in May 1991 as a Soviet citizen.

By Space Daily Editorial Team · May 21, 2026

Science

Complex animal life may be 10 million years older than scientists thought — and a new fossil site in northwestern Canada suggests it all started in the deep sea, not the shallow waters where most early fossils show up

The standard cultural framing of where animal life originated has, for most of the last century, placed the origin in shallow water.

By Daniel Moran · May 21, 2026

Science

Scientists just reversed about 80% of aging in elderly mice in a single month — and they did it by boosting one protein

A research team at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, led by Haim Cohen, has just published findings in Nature Communications that have, on close examination, produced one of the more striking results in aging research in recent years.

By Daniel Moran · May 21, 2026

Human Behaviour

NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock said the thing he missed in orbit was the smell of grass and trees and on his return he found those ordinary aromas "intoxicating". Most of us have never stopped to notice we have them

The International Space Station is sealed, filtered, and controlled — and astronauts have described its smells as antiseptic, garbage-like, or metallic.

By Mal James · May 21, 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.

Constellations

When Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev launched to Mir in May 1991, the country that sent him was still the USSR; by the time he returned in March 1992 it no longer existed, his home city of Leningrad had become Saint Petersburg, and even the spaceport that launched him — Baikonur — was now inside newly independent Kazakhstan, forcing Russia to renegotiate access to the machinery of its own space program

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Constellations

A joint European-Chinese satellite just went up on Vega-C, and the images it returns could change how scientists understand Earth’s magnetic shield

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Human Behaviour

The Sumerians wrote down complaints, love letters, lullabies, and arguments about the price of copper on clay tablets 4,000 years ago — and the things they were worried about are almost indistinguishable from the things people post online today

By Space Daily Editorial Team

Cosmology

There is a cloud of alcohol drifting through the constellation Aquila that is 1,000 times the diameter of our solar system and contains enough ethanol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer — and nobody has any commercial way to reach it, which is probably for the best

By Space Daily Editorial Team

What’s up in

Science

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

Human Behaviour

Why are so many of us still awake at midnight watching something we don’t even care about? Researchers call it “revenge bedtime procrastination” — a self-regulation failure driven by a need to reclaim the autonomy a demanding day took away

By Mal James

Science

Complex animal life may be 10 million years older than scientists thought — and a new fossil site in northwestern Canada suggests it all started in the deep sea, not the shallow waters where most early fossils show up

By Daniel Moran

Science

Scientists just reversed about 80% of aging in elderly mice in a single month — and they did it by boosting one protein

By Daniel Moran

Science

Scientists may have finally cracked why 90% of humans are right-handed — and the answer has nothing to do with our hands, it has to do with our legs

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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Why are so many of us still awake at midnight watching something we don’t even care about? Researchers call it “revenge bedtime procrastination” — a self-regulation failure driven by a need to reclaim the autonomy a demanding day took away

The international space station has had continuous human presence for over twenty-five years. The daily habits that made that possible are almost embarrassingly ordinary, which is perhaps precisely why they work

Complex animal life may be 10 million years older than scientists thought — and a new fossil site in northwestern Canada suggests it all started in the deep sea, not the shallow waters where most early fossils show up

Scientists just reversed about 80% of aging in elderly mice in a single month — and they did it by boosting one protein

NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock said the thing he missed in orbit was the smell of grass and trees and on his return he found those ordinary aromas "intoxicating". Most of us have never stopped to notice we have them

A joint European-Chinese satellite just went up on Vega-C, and the images it returns could change how scientists understand Earth’s magnetic shield

The Sumerians wrote down complaints, love letters, lullabies, and arguments about the price of copper on clay tablets 4,000 years ago — and the things they were worried about are almost indistinguishable from the things people post online today

There is a cloud of alcohol drifting through the constellation Aquila that is 1,000 times the diameter of our solar system and contains enough ethanol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer — and nobody has any commercial way to reach it, which is probably for the best

Why are so many of us still awake at midnight watching something we don’t even care about? Researchers call it “revenge bedtime procrastination” — a self-regulation failure driven by a need to reclaim the autonomy a demanding day took away

Complex animal life may be 10 million years older than scientists thought — and a new fossil site in northwestern Canada suggests it all started in the deep sea, not the shallow waters where most early fossils show up

Scientists just reversed about 80% of aging in elderly mice in a single month — and they did it by boosting one protein

Scientists may have finally cracked why 90% of humans are right-handed — and the answer has nothing to do with our hands, it has to do with our legs

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