The CST-100 Starliner spacecraft pauses in front of Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) before it embarks to Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
Update 10:41 a.m. EDT: Added additional timing information regarding work at the VIF and a statement from Boeing regarding the Starliner-1 crew makeup.
Switzerland became the 37th country to sign the Artemis Accords for peaceful moon exploration with NASA on April 15, following the inclusion of Greece and Uruguay in February.
Hmmm spaceflight is not the easiest of enterprises. NASA have let us know that their plans for the Mars Sample Return Mission have changed. The original plan was to work with ESA to collect samples from Perseverance and return them to Earth by 2031. Alas like many things, costs were increasing and timescales were slipping and with the budget challenges, NASA has had to rework their plan. Administrator Bill Nelson has now shared a simpler, less expensive and less risk alternative.
To see the premier astronomical observatory in its full-size glory, you need to go to Lagrange Point 2, a location farther away than anyone has traveled. Or, soon, you can visit Colorado.
The first year of Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) data seems to show that dark energy is weakening over time, possibly the biggest cosmological discovery for 25 years.
Just like Isaac Newton, Galileo and Albert Einstein, I’m not sure exactly when I became aware of Peter Higgs. He has been one of those names that anyone who has even the slightest interest in science, especially physics, has become aware of at some point. Professor Higgs was catapulted to fame by the concept of the Higgs Boson – or God Particle as it became known. Sadly, this shy yet key player in the world of physics passed away earlier this month.
Astronomers have discovered the most massive stellar-born black hole ever seen in the Milky Way, and it lies relatively close to Earth.
After being packed up in Germany, a long voyage to the US and then a month in storage, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has been carefully lifted out of its transport container so that the team at the launch site can start getting it ready for its big day in May.
Wading through the wealth of data from ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists have uncovered a ‘sleeping giant’. A large black hole, with a mass of nearly 33 times the mass of the Sun, was hiding in the constellation Aquila, less than 2000 light-years from Earth. This is the first time a black hole of stellar origin this big has been spotted within the Milky Way. So far, black holes of this type have only been observed in very distant galaxies. The discovery challenges our understanding of how massive stars develop and evolve.
It’s been just over a week since millions of people flocked to places across North America for a glimpse of moonshadow. The total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024 was a spectacular sight for many on the ground. From space, however, it was even more impressive as Earth-observing satellites such as GOES-16 captured the sight of the shadow sweeping over Earth.
This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples of rocks and soil being collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.
Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech
NASA is going back to square one when it comes to many aspects of its Mars Sample Return mission in response to independent reviews that showed ballooning costs and significant schedule delays.
I’m really not sure what to call it but a ‘dusty sneeze’ is probably as good as anything. We have known for some years that stars surround themselves with a disk of gas and dust known as the protostellar disk. The star interacts with it, occasionally discharging gas and dust regularly. Studying the magnetic fields revealed that they are weaker than expected. A new proposal suggests that the discharge mechanism ‘sneezes’ some of the magnetic flux out into space. Using ALMA, the team are hoping to understand the discharges and how they influence stellar formation.
The total solar eclipse of 2024 was an epic experience to share with my daughter. It was one part celestial event, one part college prep.
A detailed analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite has found evidence that its parent asteroid was altered by water before being smashed apart multiple times.
The most recognizable feature on Pluto is its “heart,” a relatively bright valentine-shaped area known as Tombaugh Regio. How that heart got started is one of the dwarf planet’s deepest mysteries — but now researchers say they’ve come up with the most likely scenario, involving a primordial collision with a planetary body that was a little more than 400 miles wide.
Look through the names and origins of the constellations and you will soon realise that many cultures had a hand in their conceptualisation. Among them are the Egyptians who were fantastic astronomers. The movement of the sky played a vital role in ancient Egypt including the development of the 365 day year and the 24 hour day. Like many other cultures they say the Sun, Moon and planets as gods. Surprisingly though, the bright Milky Way seems not to have played a vital role. Some new research suggests that this may not be the case and it may have been a manifestation of the sky goddess Nut!
The small object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month was indeed part of a pallet jettisoned from the ISS three years ago, NASA has confirmed.
BepiColombo spotted an outpour of carbon and oxygen atoms in Venus' fragile magnetic environment
Boeing Starliner astronauts spent hundreds of hours in simulators preparing for Crew Test Flight, which lifts off May 6. I got a brief taste of what they experienced.
NASA is asking its various research centers as well as private industry for new ideas about how to get Mars samples back to Earth relatively quickly and cost-effectively.
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