21 satellites manufactured by York Space Systems for Space Development Agency’s upcoming Tranche 1 Transport Layer launch. Image: York Space Systems
The first in a series of launches supporting a burgeoning satellite constellation for the Space Development Agency (SDA) is set to take flight Wednesday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
A newly discovered gamma-ray burst is unlike any seen before, repeating over the course of a day rather than erupting in milliseconds, leaving astronomers perplexed by its origins.
A cadre of iron-rich extraterrestrial particles picked up faint whiffs of our planet's atmosphere when they fell to Earth millions of years ago.
How well do we understand the Universe if we struggle to understand its most energetic events? This question can trigger a wide-ranging philosophical or even epistemological discussion. It's the kind of question that can bring the Universe's most mysterious incidents into the foreground of busy lives.
The InSight lander arrived on Mars's surface in November 2018 with the singular purpose of taking the planet's vital signs: its pulse, temperature, and reflexes. This largely consisted of using an advanced seismometer to measure "marsquakes," seismic waves caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure or meteoroid impacts. By analyzing how these waves pass through the planet, scientists were able to gain valuable insight (no pun!) into the interior structure and composition of Mars. While the InSight lander ended operations in 2022, scientists are still poring over the data it collected during its four-year primary mission.
Directive 8020 is shaking up the Supermassive Games formula for better and for worse.
In the not-too-distant future, "artificial astronauts" could fly as actual crew members on human missions to Mars, and elsewhere in space.
As part of the Artemis 2 astronaut moon mission launching no earlier than 2026, NASA is asking volunteers to test alternative forms of deep-space tracking.
NASA's hosting a teleconference on Wednesday (Sept. 10) to discuss a new rock analysis from the Perseverance Mars rover. Here's how to tune in.
Back in 2019, a consortium of scientists predicted August 2025 as the peak of the solar activity cycle. But where are we now?
Reflect Orbital plans to launch gigantic satellites to reflect sunlight into regions where night has already fallen, potentially harming eyes, altering sleep, and blocking the starry sky.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured great shots of the total lunar eclipse over the weekend.
"The country that lands on the moon first will shape the rules of engagement in space for decades to come."
From dystopian futures to interstellar adventures, this quiz explores the classics that dared to imagine the impossible—and the authors who made it unforgettable.
It isn't just supermassive black holes that are messy eaters. Using a Japanese space telescope called XRISM, scientists have found that small black holes are a "hot mess," too.
Two NOAA satellites saw a solar eclipse on Sept. 7 as the moon blocked out the sun mere hours before a lunar eclipse was seen on Earth.
Extremophiles are a favorite tool of astrobiologists. But not only are they good for understanding the kind of extreme environments that life can survive in, sometimes they are useful as actual tools, creating materials necessary for other life, like oxygen, in those extreme environments. A recent paper from Daniella Billi of the University of Rome Tor Vergata , published in pre-print form in Acta Astronautica, reviews how one particular extremophile fills the role of both useful test subject and useful tool all at once.
Conducting a flyby mission to an interstellar object visiting our solar system is "feasible and affordable," a new study finds. But orbiting such an interloper is a different story.
When the JWST finally began its long-awaited science operations in July 2022, there was a long list of targets awaiting its attention. Scientists compete for observing time by submitting proposals, and for every nine submitted proposals, only one gets approved. In the most recent Cycle 4 of the telescope's mission, scientists requested about 78,000 hours of observing time when only about 8700 were available.
The best opportunity to study black holes is when they're actively accreting matter. During these times, matter gathers in an accretion disk around the black hole, where it heats up and emits electromagnetic radiation. At other times, there's simply no light.
A new low-cost concept for interstellar travel combines solar power with a slingshot, but it would take a long time to reach the stars.
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