The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket sits on Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral at sunset. The Atlas V will launch the Kuiper 1 mission for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellite constellation. Image: United Launch Alliance
United Launch Alliance is preparing to launch the first of dozens of missions on behalf of its largest commercial customer, Amazon. Its Atlas 5 551 rocket will carry 27 Project Kuiper satellites onboard.
A design studio's plan for a new collectible set seeks to "pin" down the pivotal probes from space exploration history. Chop Shop is seeking fans of robotic spacecraft to help produce lapel pins.
Astronomers are on the hunt for those in-between black holes, not the small stellar ones or the supermassive ones, but something right in the middle. Recently, a group of scientists spotted a star travelling at high velocity out of the globular cluster M15. This speedy star got kicked out about 20 million years ago and is now zooming along at an incredible 550 km/s, fast enough that it's actually escaping our entire Galaxy! The researchers think this stellar ejection might have happened because of some cosmic game of pool - basically a three-body interaction involving one of those middle-sized black holes they've been trying to find!
New insights into the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres indicates planet-wide rainfall might take place following hydrogen atmosphere and water mixing.
The search for life in our Solar System, however primitive, past or present has typically focussed upon Mars and a select few moons of the outer Solar System. Saturn’s moon Titan for example has all the raw materials for life scattered across its surface, rivers and lakes of methane along with rock and sand containing water ice. There’s even a sprinkling of organic compounds too but according to a new study, Titan can probably only support a few kilograms of biomass overall, that’s just one cell per litre of water across Titan’s ocean.
Image: New ESA invention tested in a chamber of no echoes
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch Amazon's first big batch of Project Kuiper broadband satellites today (April 9), and you can watch it live.
This new snapshot from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express deftly captures the two distinct faces of Mars: ridged and rugged versus smooth and unmarked.
The striking Comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN) photograph was captured by astrophotographer Josh Dury at 4:50 a.m. local time on April 9.
Trump-era trade policies could reshape the global space economy, straining transatlantic ties and pushing Europe toward new partnerships and greater autonomy.
What kind of mission would be best suited to sample the plumes of Saturn’s ocean world, Enceladus, to determine if this intriguing world has the ingredients to harbor life? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the pros and cons of an orbiter or flyby mission to sample Enceladus’ plumes. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners design and develop the most scientifically effective mission to Enceladus with the goal of determining its potential habitability.
In the great tug-of-war between the Sun and its planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are much more susceptible to solar activities than scientists thought. Jupiter itself has an interesting reaction as it gets pummeled several times a month by solar wind bursts. They compress its magnetosphere and create a huge "hot spot" with temperatures over 500C.
Up until recently, astronomy was reliant entirely on electromagnetic waves. While that changed with the confirmation of gravitational waves in 2016, astronomers had developed fundamental frameworks in the electromagnetic spectrum by that point. One critical framework broke the spectrum into three categories based on their wavelength - infrared, optical, and ultraviolet. To astronomers, each of these categories was created by a different physical phenomenon, and monitoring each gave its insight into what that phenomenon was doing, no matter what the other spectra said. This was especially prevalent when researching galaxies, as infrared and optical wavelengths were used to analyze different aspects of galaxy formation and behavior. However, Christian Kragh Jespersen of Princeton's Department of Astrophysics and his colleagues think they have found a secret that breaks the entire electromagnetic framework - the optical and infrared are connected.
It’s easy to measure the rotation rate of terrestrial planet by tracking surface features but the gas and ice giants pose more of a problem. Instead, previous studies have relied upon indirect measures like measuring the rotation of their magnetic fields. Now a team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to refine the rotation rate of Uranus with an incredible level of accuracy. This time though, instead of studying the rotation of the magnetic field, they tracked aurora to measure one rotation!
We all know that black holes can devour stars. Rip them apart and consume their remnants. But that only happens if a star passes too close to a black hole. What if a star gets close enough to a star to experience strong tidal effects, but not close enough to be immediately devoured? This scenario is considered in a recent paper on the arXiv.
Asteroid 2024 YR4, once a potential Earth threat, likely originated from the main asteroid belt's central region, a surprising origin for Earth-crossing space rocks, a new study finds.
Trump officially nominated Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut to lead NASA, shortly after taking office.
Black holes power some of the most energetic phenomena in the known universe, but could they ever power an advanced human civilisation?
Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro says that these are strange times for the space agency.
An extreme protocluster gathering of infant galaxies is hiding a vast cosmic fuel tank that is powering 400 million years of intense star formation.
Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting says the United States military needs orbital weapons in order to be successful if war ever comes to space.
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