SpaceX’s fully integrated Starship rocket stands at Launch Tower 1 at the Starbased facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, ahead of the launch of the Flight 7 mission. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
SpaceX is preparing to kick off the new year of suborbital flights around the world with a launch of its nearly 40-story-tall Starship rocket from southern Texas Thursday afternoon.
The largest photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy, assembled from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations, unveils hundreds of millions of stars. It took more than 10 years to collect data for this colorful portrait of our neighbouring galaxy and was created from more than 600 snapshots. This stunning, colourful mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars, and is spread across roughly 2.5 billion pixels.
With ESA’s EarthCARE satellite and four measuring instruments all working extremely well and fully commissioned, the mission’s ‘first level’ data stream is now freely available.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off the pad for the first time at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: Pete Carstens/MaxQ Productions for Spaceflight Now
Blue Origin entered into the history books in the predawn hours of Thursday. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, became the first to successfully reach orbit on their first launch with a new orbital-class rocket in the new era of commercial spaceflight that dawned in the last two decades.
Saturn continues to be a source of wonder and scientific discovery, especially with its iconic rings and the potential for life on moons like Titan and Enceladus.
Water is the essence of life. Every living thing on Earth contains water within it. The Earth is rich with life because it is rich with water. This fundamental connection between water and life is partly due to water’s extraordinary properties, but part of it is due to the fact that water is one of the most abundant molecules in the Universe. Made from one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen, its structure is simple and strong. The hydrogen comes from the primordial fire of the Big Bang and is by far the most common element. Oxygen is created in the cores of large stars, along with carbon and nitrogen, as part of the CNO fusion cycle.
The James Webb Space Telescope's ancient "little red dot" galaxies have been seen as a sign of "broken cosmology." Feeding supermassive black holes may have come to the rescue.
Director Fede Alvarez spoke to Empire about fixing the controversial CGI of Rook in Alien: Romulus.
Goodnight Gaia. The European Space Agency star-tracking satellite ceased operations on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, after 12 years of mapping the Milky Way.
There’s plenty of action at the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole (SMBH) known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) literally holds the galaxy together. Part of that action is the creation of gigantic flares from Sgr A*, which can give off energy equivalent to 10 times the Sun’s annual energy output. However, scientists have been missing a key feature of these flares for decades – what they look like in the mid-infrared range. But now, a team led by researchers at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has published a paper that details what a flare looks like in those frequencies for the first time.
A composition photo of images taken during the lunar occultation on Jan. 4 captures the progression of the moon moving in front of Saturn, briefly hiding it from viewers on Earth.
From magnification to light-gathering, here’s how to make the decision between buying a telescope or a monocular for stargazing and astronomy.
In its final episode, Skeleton Crew sticks the landing with lots of action and some genuinely tense moments, but its answers are limited.
There is an increasing willingness in the space sector to tackle the problem of space debris. Yet much of the required technology to mitigate or prevent its risks is still missing.
A massive white dwarf and a sun-like "blue lurker" star tell a remarkable story of what was once a triple-star system in the M67 cluster.
As we approach solar maximum, something strange is happening to the sun's magnetic field. We explore this flip in polarity in more detail and look at the effects it could have on Earth.
Hot Jupiters may not be the lonely giants scientists once thought they were.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just launched lunar landers built by Firefly Aerospace and Tokyo-based company ispace. What's next for the two craft?
SpaceX is set to launch the seventh test flight of its Starship megarocket on Thursday (Jan. 16) at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT), and you can watch the action live.
Three InCubed satellites have launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, highlighting ESA’s role as partner to industry and its support for business and technology innovation.
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This is a new artist’s animation of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.
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