News & articles

In a spectacular few days for solar system exploration – during which NASA whizzed the New Horizons spacecraft past the Kuiper Belt object 2009 MU69 (somewhat controversially nicknamed “Ultima Thule”) and eased OSIRIS-REx into orbit about the asteroid Bennu – the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) has set its Chang'e 4 lander and rover down on the far side of the moon.

At 84, Shoso Kawamoto is one of the few surviving hibakusha – the Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors – orphans, still telling his story.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, successfully completed a flyby of “Ultima Thule”, an object in the Kuiper belt of bodies beyond Neptune on January 1, 2019.

As 2019 begins, OU research looks back on its impact on 2018, which ranges from discovering a new planet, to tackling fake news, to understanding reading habits from the past to today.

An OU researcher is leading a research project aimed at understanding mathematical structures which display a particularly interesting kind of order, which could have implications for the design of smart materials.

On Day 250, Professor Simon Lee reflects on the Year of #Mygration

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages, where The Conversation asks experts to answer questions from kids. 

Special Envoy for Promotion of freedom of religion outside the EU and former deputy prime minister of the Slovak Republic, Dr Ján Figeľ, stressed the importance of remaining ‘open-minded and open-hearted’ around religion, when he visited the OU last week (December 2018)

Dr Tendayi Bloom, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at The Open University shares her thoughts after attending the intergovernmental meeting to adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM)

In today's post, Dr Sharif Haider (Lecturer, Social Work, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, The Open University) discusses mental health among the refugee community. He urges us to refrain from labelling refugees experiencing mental health issues