File: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket stands at Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of the Starlink 17-31 mission on March 13, 2026. Image: SpaceX
SpaceX completed its 600th Falcon booster landing during a Starlink mission Sunday. The Falcon 9 rocket departed Vandenberg Space Force Base on a south-southwesterly trajectory at 9:03:09 a.m. PDT (12:03:09 pm EDT / 1603:09 UTC).
Two different ways to tell the same story.
The new moon is the perfect time to spot faint constellations, galaxies and a quartet of planets in the dawn sky.
In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*'s intense gravitational pull. That didn't happen, and the event turned out to be a cosmic fizzle. G2 skipped around the black hole, survived the flyby, and continued on a shortened orbit. Various observations showed that it wasn't just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars.
Understanding the beginning of the solar system requires us to look at some very strange places. One such place is at the so-called “Trojan” asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit in front of and behind it. But for a long time, these cosmic time capsules have held a mystery for astronomers: why are they color-coded? The populations of larger asteroids are very clear split into two distinct groups - the “reds” and the “less reds”, because apparently they’re all red to some extent. A new paper from researchers in Japan tried to solve this mystery by taking a close look at even smaller asteroids, and their findings, published in a recent edition of The Astronomical Journal, actually brings up a completely different question - why don’t smaller Trojan asteroids have the same color-coding?
The size of waves on alien worlds will depend as much on the characteristics of the liquid as well as the gravity.
Two factors dominate our search for life and habitability elsewhere in the galaxy. The first is liquid water, which, as far as we know, is necessary for life. When we find exoplanets, scientists try to determine if they're in their stars' habitable zones. Under the right atmospheric conditions, liquid water could persist there.
How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?
Comet R3 Pan-STARRS is about to put on its climatic perihelion act.
Hubble images never fail to amaze.
Fast solar wind could spark geomagnetic storms tonight, pushing auroras into mid-latitudes.
The heat shield on Artemis 2's Orion capsule appears to have held up incredibly well during its scorching downward trip through Earth's atmosphere, mission commander Reid Wiseman said.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS changed significantly as it flew by the sun last fall, astronomers have discovered.
Living long-term on the Moon means surviving the devastating toll that deep space takes on a human body. Astronauts in low gravity environments suffer muscle and bone loss, vision-altering fluid shifts, and heavy radiation exposure - all of which are incredibly hazardous to our biology. So, to help future lunar explorers survive, a new crew just arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). That might not sound surprising, except this crew is composed of worms.
Mars is well known as a static, frozen desert. We tend to think of the only thing changing on the surface of the Red Planet is due to the occasional dust storm. But if you look closely - and are willing to wait decades - you’ll see the planet is very much alive - at least in the environmental sense. The European Space Agency just released some spectacular new images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on its Mars Express Orbiter, one of which shows a surprisingly “fast” geological change happening in Utopia Planitia. A dark, ominous-looking blanket of volcanic ash is actively creeping across the bright red sands - and it's moving (relatively) fast.
Things are gearing up in the development of the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, as its developers enter the final design phase before the project goes before Congress for funding.
The waxing Moon this week visits Venus, the Pleiades, and the Jupiter-Pollux-Castor triangle, then it occults Regulus in a bright sky.
Image: This image from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the coast of Gabon in striking colours.
(This is Part 2 of a series on Cherenkov radiation — the "light boom." Read Part 1 first.)
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