10 amazing space discoveries of 2025

Our understanding of the Solar System - and the wider Universe - has changed dramatically in the last 12 months. Join George Dransfield as she spotlights the year's astonishing breakthroughs

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The year 2025 has been a vintage one for astronomy. In January, we were hooked on reports of a building-sized asteroid on course to collide with Earth. The risk was quickly downgraded from worrying to virtually nonexistent, but it set the tone for a year packed with discoveries and surprises.

We're living in a golden era of space observation. Telescopes on the ground and up in orbit are revealing more of the Universe than ever before, and in exceptional detail. And we're not just talking about the distant cosmos - some incredible discoveries have taken place close to home. Visitors from outer space, leopard print on Mars, vast hydrogen clouds hiding in plain sight.... At times it's felt like science fiction.

So, let's take a whistle-stop tour through 10 of 2025's most astonishing discoveries. Records have been broken, new objects discovered, and we're ending the year with more questions than answers. But hey, that's how science should be...

1. The Quipu superstructure

We found a vast chain of galaxies – the biggest cosmic structure ever recorded

Let's start BIG. Early in 2025, astronomers revealed the largest cosmic superstructure ever detected. It's a vast chain of galaxy clusters linked together in three-dimensional space. The team behind the discovery named it 'Quipu' after the Incan knotted cords used for record keeping, both because of its resemblance and as a nod to the key observations being made at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.