Space News & Blog Articles

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How to see China's Tiangong space station and the ISS in the predawn sky this week

The International Space Station and China's Tiangong Space Station will be visible for early risers. Here's how to make a dual sighting.

'An exceedingly rare event': See a pair of nova explosions shining in the southern sky this week.

Both novas will eventually become too dim to see, even under the darkest skies. So catch them while you can!

Rare breed of exploding star discovered by citizen scientists in cataclysmic find

With the aid of citizen scientists, astronomers have discovered an erupting cataclysmic variable star in a rarely seen evolutionary stage.

Early Amazon Prime Day big saving on the Celestron NexStar 8SE — the cheapest price it's been since January

Save $200 on the best telescope for viewing the planets — the Celestron NexStar 8SE has a huge discount this Prime Day

ULA begins stacking its 1st Vulcan rocket supporting a national security mission

United Launch Alliance (ULA) hoists its Vulcan first stage booster into the Vertical Integration Facility-G (VIF-G) adjacent to Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Oct. 22, 2024. The rocket will launch the USSF-106 mission for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command, Vulcan’s first national security flight. Image: United Launch Alliance

A little more than a week after its most recent Atlas 5 rocket launch, United Launch Alliance rolled a Vulcan booster to the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday morning to begin stacking its first post-certification Vulcan rocket.

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Watch Russia's Progress 92 cargo ship launch toward the ISS today

A Russian Progress cargo spacecraft will launch toward the International Space Station this afternoon (July 3), and you can watch the action live.

The best Fourth of July and early Amazon Prime Day space tech deals on the market

These are our picks of the best space tech deals you can get ahead of Fourth of July and Amazon Prime Day with offers on telescopes, star projectors and more.

Earth is farthest from the sun today. So why is it so hot?

Earth is at its farthest point from the sun on July 3. So why are temperatures so high across the U.S.?

In the Search for Earth-like Worlds, We Should Probably Focus on Red Dwarfs

When astronomers first discovered exoplanets, they found massive ones orbiting large stars. The technology to detect smaller planets around low-mass, dim red dwarfs took time to develop. By the mid-2000s, HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) was specifically targeting M dwarfs and in 2009 discovered the least massive exoplanet at the time.

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Weather Satellites Can Even Study the Weather Over on Venus

In 2014 and 2016, the Himawari-8 and -9 satellites were launched into orbit. Owned and operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), these satellites monitor global weather patterns and atmospheric phenomena using their multispectral Advanced Himawari Imagers (AHIs). In a recent study, a team led by the University of Tokyo presented infrared images that capture changes in Venus' atmosphere, revealing unseen temperature patterns in its cloud tops. The results show that meteorological satellites can complement observations of Venus' atmosphere by robotic missions and ground-based telescopes.

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Inbound: Astronomers Discover Third Interstellar Object

Astronomy news always seems to break over coffee, on laptop startup. That was the case Wednesday morning, when word of a curious new object started flashing across the message boards.

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Tianwen-2 Looks Back at the Earth

China's Tianwen-2 probe continues on its journey to rendezvous with a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) before heading to the Main Asteroid Belt. The second in China's interplanetary exploration program (which translates to "Questions to Heaven"), this mission will obtain samples from asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa and return them to Earth. From there, China plans to send the probe to rendezvous with the Main Belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS to explore it using its 11 onboard instruments. Yesterday, the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) released images the probe took of Earth and the Moon.

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'52 Assignments: Night Photography': A Q&A with author and astrophotographer Josh Dury

"…are we potentially the last generation that will see the night's sky in its entirety?"

Space Missions

1. Human Spaceflight Missions

Apollo Program (NASA, USA)

  • Goal: Land humans on the Moon and return them safely

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Climate satellite MethaneSAT backed by Bezos and Google fails in space after just 1 year

MethaneSAT, the first satellite made by an environmental nonprofit organization, was designed to monitor some of the world's largest industrial contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, without power, the spacecraft's mission has abruptly ended.

The secret of why Mars grew cold and dry may be locked away in its rocks

As the sun grew hotter, so did Mars, prompting much of its atmospheric carbon dioxide to rain out and ultimately get locked up in rocks.

Clingy planets can trigger own doom, suspect Cheops and TESS

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have caught an exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits. These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year.

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