Space News & Blog Articles

An illustration of Draper’s SERIES-2 lunar lander, which will deliver science and technology payloads to the moon for NASA in 2025. Credit: Draper

NASA has awarded Draper a $73 million contract to deliver science instruments to the far side of the moon on a commercial robotic lander in 2025, the eighth award through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Officials with the companies flying the first two CLPS missions, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, said recently their commercial landers are scheduled to launch late this year or early next year.

What happens when stellar couples break their embrace? New research reveals details of an important life event in the existence of binary stars.

Astronomers have created the largest ever 3D map of 1 million distant galaxies otherwise obscured by the Milky Way's dwarf galaxy neighbors, the Magellanic Clouds.

Night-shining or noctilucent clouds are popping up farther from the poles, in part due to more rocket launches taking place from Earth.

The most extensive inventory of atmospheric optical illusions created in 5 millennia of observation reveals lingering mysteries.

Since the 1960s, researchers have been searching for a 3D model of coronal loops of bright plasma seen on the sun. New research is causing scientists to rethink this phenomenon.

Blue Origin is targeting Thursday (Aug. 4) for the next crewed mission of its New Shepard vehicle, which will send six people to suborbital space and back.

A parsec is a standard astronomical measurement that is often misunderstood.

This weekend might have three meteor showers active at the same time, combining to provide a celestial firework display almost all through the night.

An unusual galaxy merger boasts multiple interwoven arms in a newly released Hubble Space Telescope image.

The peak shooting star season has arrived with six meteor showers expected to pepper Earth in the upcoming weeks as the planet hurtles through fields of cometary debris.

Social media pictures suggest an unpressurized 'trunk' from the SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft might have fallen to Earth near Dalgety on July 8, matching re-entry calculations.

A big Chinese rocket body will crash back to Earth tomorrow (July 30), but nobody knows exactly when or where.

Week in images: 25-29 July 2022

The Delta Aquarrids meteor shower peaks tonight (July 29). The shower commonly generates about 15-20 meteors per hour and is best viewed around 3 a.m. local time.

Europe's planned Venus exploration mission will depend on a challenging aerobraking procedure to lower its orbit, which will test the thermal resiliency of its materials to the limits.

The runaway star is dashing across the galaxy at more than 100,000 mph, thanks to a massive explosion that happened more than a million years ago.

NASA is working toward an Aug. 29 launch target date for Artemis 1, which will use a Space Launch System megarocket to send an uncrewed Orion capsule on a multiweek mission around the moon.

A TikTok video from European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti dished about the smells of the International Space Station, particularly the toilet and trash.

As the Big Dipper dips and the Guardians of the Pole align one over the other, Saturn looms low in the southeast and the False Comet teases at its highest.