File photo of SpaceX’s Ship 24 vehicle, slated to fly on the Starship integrated flight test. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now
SpaceX continues to prepare for a launch attempt as soon as next week for the first test flight of its Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket, with final work on the ship’s self-destruct system, data reviews, and the receipt of an FAA license still to come before teams proceed into a countdown in South Texas.
These photos and a time lapse video from the European Space Agency chronicle the final preparations for launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft from the Guiana Space Center on the second-to-last Ariane 5 rocket.
The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft is buttoned up for launch inside the payload fairing of an Ariane 5 rocket. The illustration on the Ariane 5 payload fairing was the winning submission in a children’s art competition, drawn by eight-year-old Yaryna from Ukraine. Credit:
ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut
The European Space Agency’s $1.7 billion robotic Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission is ready for liftoff Thursday from French Guiana, beginning an eight-year cruise to the solar system’s largest planet before becoming the first-ever spacecraft to orbit one of Jupiter’s moons in the 2030s.
Relativity Space has moved on from its pathfinder Terran 1 rocket after a single flight, focusing on the development of the bigger, reusable Terran R.
The Federal Communications Commission will create a new Space Bureau to work with regulations regarding space debris, space safety and other low Earth orbit needs.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for the ViaSat 3 Americas mission inside the hangar at Launch Complex 39A. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy mission, set for April 18 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will launch a powerhouse bus-sized broadband satellite for Viasat into a high-altitude circular geostationary orbit, a demanding flight profile that will require disposal of all three of the rocket’s reusable boosters.
The European Space Agency (ESA) shared images of the Ariane 5 rocket that will send its JUICE spacecraft to Jupiter and its moons as it is rolled out to the pad ahead of its April 13 launch.
Japan's Hakuto-R spacecraft is preparing to make a historic lunar landing attempt on April 25.
Our planet hasn’t always been the warm, inviting place we know today. At least five times in its history, Earth froze over, locked in the grip of an ice age. Scientists sometimes refer to these periods as “Snowball Earth.” The popular idea is that everything was covered with ice, making life difficult, if not impossible. But, there’s new evidence that during at least one of these icy periods, parts of Earth’s surface could have been more like a giant mushy ball of slush.
Europe's Jupiter mission JUICE has only one second a day to launch to hit the correct trajectory that will take it to the gas giant planet in eight years' time.
The European Earth-observing satellite Pleiades Neo snapped a rare sequence of images capturing the giant planet Jupiter and its moons.
Europe's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission is set to launch for its 8-year cruise to the solar system's largest planet on Thursday at 8:15 EDT (1215 GMT) and you can watch it live via Space.com.
Scorpio is one of the 12 zodiac constellations and is located in the southern sky. It is best seen during the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere and during the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. The constellation is represented by a scorpion, and its brightest star is Antares, which is a red giant star located about 600 light-years away from Earth.
Flashes of radio waves — whose exact sources are still a bit of a mystery — are helping astronomers learn about the hot gas that surrounds the Milky Way.
A newfound asteroid called 2023 FW13 has been Earth's companion for centuries, astronomers say.
A smart telescope designed for beginners and pros, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 provides excellent views and photos of the cosmos.
Marvel Comics reveals a first look at new "Star Wars: Dark Droids" horror comic book series at Star Wars Celebration 2023.
How did the most massive stars form? Astronomers have debated their origins for decades. One of the biggest problems facing these theories is the lack of observations. Massive stars are relatively rare, and so it’s hard to catch them in the act of formation. But new observations of the so-called Dragon cloud may hold the clue to answering this mystery.
Access to space is getting easier and more accessible as more and more platforms are coming online that can significantly decrease the cost of getting into Earth’s orbit or even beyond. Now, another company has taken a step forward in making inexpensive, reusable access to space a reality. Dawn Aerospace, which operates out of the US, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, has successfully tested a prototype spaceplane.
The portable Olympus 8x25 WP II boasts an excellent optical system for clear views of the moon and bright targets with superb contrast.
Amanda Morris, a press release writer at Northwestern University, describes an important astronomical effect in terms entertaining enough to be worth reposting here: “The cosmos would look a lot better if the Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t photobombing it all the time.” That’s certainly one way to describe the air’s effect on astronomical observations, and it’s annoying enough to astronomers that they constantly have to correct for distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere, even at the most advanced observatories at the highest altitudes. Now a team from Northwestern and Tsinghua Universities have developed an AI-based tool to allow astronomers to automatically remove the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere from pictures taken for their research.
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