Space News & Blog Articles

NASA's Psyche mission launched in 2023 and has now successfully demonstrated that laser technology can transmit high-bandwidth data across millions of kilometres in space, making it promising for communications from Mars. However, researchers simulating Martian conditions found that while this optical communication works well under normal circumstances, performance degrades during dustier periods and fails completely during global dust storms.

NASA researchers got a rare chance to study Uranus' atmosphere and rings this month, when the ice giant passed between Earth and a distant star, creating a "stellar occultation."

The 2005 cult classic was pivotal to giving the Grand Army of the Republic faces and voices before George Lucas and Dave Filoni went deeper.

The Trump administration has canceled the New York City lease of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a leading NASA climate-studying organization.

Venus, Saturn and dim Neptune will form a planetary triangle in the pre-dawn sky on April 28, with Mercury hovering on the periphery.

What kind of spacecraft can be used to explore and study the subsurface lunar environment? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as an international team of researchers discussed the benefits of a mission concept called LunarLeaper, which will be designed to traverse and analyze the various aspects of the lunar subsurface environment, including moon pits and lava tubes.

Since the invention of the telescope, astronomers have been hunting for objects in our Solar System in particular and more recently, for the theorised 9th planet. Observations of Kuiper Belt objects suggest a large object might be lurking in the depths of the Solar System but to date, it hasn’t been directly observed. A team of researchers have analysed infrared sky surveys and found 13 objects that matched the estimated flux and motion of Planet Nine! Further analysis ruled out 12 leaving a single object. Is this Planet Nine?

A few years ago, astronomers discovered an exoplanet orbiting the white dwarf 1856+534 b. Now they've used the mighty JWST to do follow-up observations and made some exciting discoveries. It's definitely a planet and not a brown dwarf, with a temperature of 186 K (-87°C/-125°F) and about 6 times the mass of Jupiter. This makes it the coldest exoplanet ever detected, and it's orbiting in the "forbidden zone," which should have been engulfed during the red giant phase.

Magnetars are among the rarest - and weirdest - denizens of the galactic zoo. They have powerful magnetic fields and may be the source of fast radio bursts (FRBs). A team of astronomers led by European Space Agency researcher Ashley Chrimes recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to track one of these monsters called SGR 0501+4516 (SGR0501, for short, and SGR stands for Soft Gamma Repeater). It's whipping through the Milky Way at a rate that could be as high as 65 kilometers per second. The big challenge was to find its birthplace and figure out its origin.

Veteran creature artists Stephen Love and Rob Strange share the rigors of having zero vision and taking tumbles while playing retro robots.

NASA's pioneering Dragonfly mission has passed its critical design review, keeping it on track for a 2028 launch to the potentially life-hosting Saturn moon Titan.

File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) ahead of the launch of the Starlink 12-21 mission. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

SpaceX is preparing to launch back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets on Sunday from both California and Florida. The Starlink 12-23 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is set to follow the Starlink 11-9 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The Doctor may not realise it at first, but he's been to Planet 6767 before…

File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch the Starlink 7-14 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX is preparing to launch back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets on Sunday from both California and Florida. Up first is the Starlink 11-9 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base with 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites onboard.

On Episode 158 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by John Grunsfeld to talk about the Hubble Space Telescope on its 35th anniversary.

Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket stands at Space Launch Complex 2 West at Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of the launch of the ‘Message in a Booster’ mission. Image: Trevor Mahlamann / Firefly Aerospace

A perfect storm of range restrictions and suboptimal weather seems to finally be clearing for Firefly Aerospace. After delaying the flight of their sixth Alpha rocket for more than a month, the company announced a new launch window, which opens on Sunday.

Celebrate International Dark Sky Week by tracking down 10 astronomy targets.

Firefly Aerospace's CEO Jason Kim says the company's successful Blue Ghost moon lander mission revealed 'so much that we didn't know' about the lunar surface.

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1992 astronomers have now found over 5,000 alien worlds around other stars. With the discoveries of exoplanets came an entirely new classification of worlds known as the super-Earth; terrestrial planets more massive than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Sadly we don’t have any such planets in our Solar System but a new report suggests planets like this are surprisingly common with at least as many as there are Neptune sized planets.

In a recent paper, a team of engineers from Purdue University describes how sandbox video games that offer players a high degree of freedom and creativity, like the popular Kerbal Space Program (KSP), could be used by space agencies to assist the early-mission development process.

Images of Mars never cease to amaze. This latest image of NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rover as a dark speck and the end of a long trail of tracks. It was rattling along at a speed of 0.16 km/h across the Gediz Vallis Channel and was headed towards a region that could have been formed by water billions of years ago. The weather on Mars won’t allow the tracks to persist though so they are likely to last for only a few months.