Space News & Blog Articles

Video: 00:02:01

ESA’s state-of-the-art Biomass satellite has launched aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 29 April 2025 at 11:15 CEST (06:15 local time).

Long-forgotten mine fields in Cambodia are being revealed in decades-old, recently declassified images from U.S. military satellites.

What will a human experience while standing on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, even with the protection of a pressurized spacesuit? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as William O’Hara, who is the Executive Director of Explore Titan investigated what physical attributes a human will experience when standing on Titan’s surface. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, mission planners, and the public better understand the risks associated with sending humans to far-off worlds for long periods of time and how to develop technologies to mitigate these risks.

SpaceX sent another batch of Starlink satellites to orbit tonight (April 28), its second liftoff of the day.

Star birth is a process hidden inside dense crèches of gas and dust. Yet, if you know what to look for, you can see the products of this essential cosmic process across the sky. The Circinus West molecular cloud is a starbirth crèche some 2,500 light-years away. It boasts everything from dark nebulae to protostellar objects and newborn stars to the faint ghosts of stars that have already died.

How can walking robots deliver more efficient in-situ robotic exploration on the Moon compared to other types of robots? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) discussed the benefits of using legged robots for lunar exploration regarding gait speed (walking speed). This study has the potential to help engineers, scientists, mission planners, and astronauts develop novel robotic designs to conduct more efficient science and mission objectives on future Moon surface missions.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to begin the Starlink 12-10 mission on Monday, April 28, 2025. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Update 11:05 p.m. EDT: SpaceX landed the first stage booster on the droneship.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launched the first big batch of satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband constellation to low Earth orbit today (April 28).

Earth has a number of companions in space; of course the Moon is the most well known but there are a host of smaller objects that visit us, complete a few orbits then head off again. A team of astronomers have detected four objects like this and have performed spectroscopic analyses on them. They found that their surface composition is similar to eh Moon suggesting that it’s a major source of these temporary satellites instead of the asteroid belt.

The Orion Nebula is a fabulous example of a vast cloud of electrically charged gas which is emitting bright radiation. If the atoms in the gas are cool enough though, they can form giant molecular clouds that obscure light, these are known as dark nebula. A team of astronomers have now found an enormous cloud of molecular hydrogen in our own cosmic backyard just 300 light years away. The cloud contains 3,400 times the mass of the Sun and if we could see it, it would stretch nearly 40 times the width of the Moon across the sky.

The European Space Agency's Biomass forest-monitoring satellite will launch atop a Vega-C rocket early Tuesday morning (April 29), and you can watch the liftoff live.

Satellite imagery reveals scope of damage from one of the largest fires New Jersey has seen in decades.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Seventy-year-old NASA astronaut Don Pettit looked pretty peaked shortly after returning to Earth from the ISS this month. And he was pretty peaked — he'd just thrown up on the Kazakh steppe.

How do robots feel in space? This is both a practical and possibly an existential question. Still, today, we'll focus on the practical side by looking at a review paper from Hadi Jahanshahi and Zheng Zhu of York University in Canada that discusses different tactile sensor types and their advantages and disadvantages for use in space.

Ion drives are renowned for their efficiency. They're extremely efficient compared to chemical rockets, so they're preferred for deep space missions where propellant supplies are critical. New research shows how they could run on simple water, making them even more efficient.

China's outgoing Shenzhou 19 crew have handed over the reins of the Tiangong space station to a new set of astronauts.

Space isn't safe from money-hungry corporations, and sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 will play with that idea in 2025. Here's everything we know about Obsidian's sci-fi sequel.

The Meta Quest 3S costs as little as $299.99, and with performance to match its big sibling, the Quest 3, it's an absolute winner.

A newly found, huge cloud near our solar system probably won't form stars, but will rather disperse as part of a feedback cycle that regulates star formation.

'This really digs into two of my favorite things: where I'm from in Oklahoma, and robots and science fiction'