Space News & Blog Articles

ESA continues to break down barriers and create more opportunities for small companies to get involved in space. Start-up companies and small enterprises offer agile and bespoke development adding value to Europe’s future space economy.

Video: 00:02:52

The night of 26 September 2022 will make space history - as the moment when NASA's DART spacecraft impacts the Dimorphos asteroid in an attempt to divert its course - humankind's first planetary defence test. Next, in 2024, ESA launches its Hera spacecraft to investigate the post-impact asteroid. In fact, Hera is not one spacecraft but three: it carries with it ESA's first deep-space CubeSats to make extra observations of its target.

Image:

These spectacular images feature the spiral galaxy IC 5332, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (right). The images display the powerful capabilities that both world-leading space telescopes provide, especially when combining their data.

Artemis 1 is headed for Kennedy Space Center's huge Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be safe from Hurricane Ian, should the storm's lash fall on Florida's Atlantic coast.

The long-range navigation camera on NASA’s DART spacecraft captured this view of asteroid Dimorphos moments before impact. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

A $330 million NASA mission completed what amounts to an interplanetary game of darts Monday night with an on-target collision with a space rock nearly 7 million miles from Earth, testing a technique that scientists could use in the future to protect our home planet from a threatening asteroid.

Live coverage of pre-launch preparations for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

It's rare for spacecraft mission personnel to cheer at the words "loss of signal," but tonight, that's exactly what happened.

In NASA's galactic game of pinball, Didymos is the jackpot.

NASA's DART spacecraft is no more, but its final view is incredible.

SpaceX's Crew-5 astronaut mission for NASA remains on target to launch next week, provided Mother Nature cooperates.

ESA’s Hera mission team congratulates their counterparts in NASA’s DART mission team for their historic impact with the Dimorphos asteroid. Moving at 6.1 km per second, the vending-machine-sized Double Asteroid Redirect Test spacecraft struck the 160-m diameter asteroid at 01:15 CEST (00:15 BST) in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in humankind’s first test of the ‘kinetic impactor’ method of planetary defence.

For the first time in history, a spacecraft from Earth has crashed into an asteroid to test a way to save our planet from extinction.

Live coverage of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART mission. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.

Something in space shuttle history needs changing. Or that seems to be case in the episode "Atlantis" of "Quantum Leap," which finds Ben Song headed into orbit on the space shuttle Atlantis.

It will take days to weeks for astronomers to confirm whether or not NASA's asteroid smasher DART changed the orbit of its target, asteroid Dimorphos.

SpaceX's launch of 52 more Starlink satellites was visible all along the East Coast of the United States, generating footage of Saturday's sunset launch.

The massive United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket put on a show in its last flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

NASA will slam the DART spacecraft into an asteroid for target practice to get ready for the next big hit, but don't worry: nothing big is set to come at us for the next 100 years.

China just launched two missions less than 40 hours apart, sending three satellites to Earth orbit.

The DART spacecraft's tiny companion is ready to photograph a brand-new impact site Monday night (Sept. 26).