A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched lunar landers for Firefly Aerospace and the Japanese company ispace early this morning (Jan. 15).
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American, Japanese robotic landers share rocket launch to the Moon
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander pictured atop a bespoke payload canister, which encased ispace’s Resilience lunar lander prior to encapsulation inside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 payload fairings. Image: SpaceX
For the first time in lunar exploration, two robotic landers, from two different nations launched to the Moon on one rocket.
Little house on the (moon) prairie: Artist's 'Moonhouse' set to lift off on lunar lander
The moon is about to gain its first tiny house. Launching on a Japanese lunar lander is the "Moonhouse," a project by Mikael Genberg 25 years in the making.
Here's what NASA is sending to the moon on Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander
NASA is sending a suite of science and technology demonstrations on Firefly Aerospace's Ghost Riders in the Sky mission to the surface of the moon.
Rubin Observatory aces 1st image tests, gets ready to use world's largest digital camera
The Rubin Observatory will eventually hold the world's largest digital camera. It's therefore a good sign it has aced its first image test.
What's flying to the moon on ispace's Resilience lunar lander?
Tokyo-based company ispace's Resilience lunar lander will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Wednesday (Jan. 15). Here's what the spacecraft is carrying.
Nocs Provisions 8X32 Field Tube monocular review
The Nocs Field Tube 8x32 is weatherproof and offers excellent views of the moon and planets. It's a great companion for the great outdoors.
Feeding supermassive black holes are more common than thought across the universe
Feeding supermassive black holes are more common in the cosmos than previously suspected. What could possibly hide such ravenous cosmic titans?
Watch SpaceX launch 2 private moon landers on a single rocket early Jan. 15
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch moon landers built by Firefly Aerospace and the Japanese company ispace early Wednesday (Jan. 15), and you can watch it live.
Mars hides behind the Full Wolf Moon in gorgeous photos from around the world
People across the world captured awesome views of a large Full Wolf Moon and a mini Mars.
SpaceX launches 131 spacecraft on Transporter-12 Falcon 9 rideshare mission from California
A Falcon 9 rocket roars away from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Jan. 14, 2025, on the Transporter 12 mission. Image: Space X.
SpaceX launched 131 payloads Tuesday onboard the company’s 12th smallsat rideshare mission to date.
BepiColombo's sixth Mercury flyby: the movie
Video: 00:01:36
Fly over Mercury with BepiColombo for the final time during the mission’s epic expedition around the Sun. The ESA/JAXA spacecraft captured these images of the Solar System's smallest planet on 7 and 8 January 2025, before and during its sixth encounter with Mercury. This was its final planetary flyby until it enters orbit around the planet in late 2026.
Space2Sea Antarctica: 2 Ukrainian soldiers fulfill 1st part of Antarctic dream
Visiting Antarctica — and, in particular, Ukraine's Vernadsky Research Base on the continent's peninsula — was a lifelong dream of two Ukrainian soldiers.
How to Debate a Flat-Earther
The problem with debating a flat-Earther is that they didn’t arrive at their conclusions from the weight evidence, so using the evidence isn’t going to work to change their minds.
LIGO Has Detected Unusual Black Holes Merging, But they Probably Don’t Explain Dark Matter
The traditional theory of black hole formation seems to struggle to explain how black holes can merge into larger more massive black holes yet they have been seen with LIGO. It’s possible that they may have formed at the beginning of time and if so, then they may be a worthy candidate to explain dark matter but only if there are enough of them. A team of researchers recently searched for microlensing events from black holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud but didn’t find enough to account for more than a fraction of dark matter.
XMM-Newton catches giant black hole’s X-ray oscillations
The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton has detected rapidly fluctuating X-rays coming from the very edge of a supermassive black hole in the heart of a nearby galaxy. The results paint a fascinating picture that defies how we thought matter falls into such black holes, and points to a potential source of gravitational waves that ESA’s future mission, LISA, could see.
SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 12-4 mission on Jan. 13, 2025. Image: SpaceX
Update 2:37 p.m. EST (1937 UTC): SpaceX confirmed deployment of the Starlink satellites.
Blue Origin scrubs first New Glenn launch attempt due to “vehicle subsystem issue”
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station prior to the rocket’s inaugural flight on the NG-1 mission. Image: Blue Origin
Update 3:20 a.m. EST (0820 UTC): Blue Origin scrubbed the launch.
SpaceX launches, lands first stage booster for record-setting 25th time during Starlink flight
SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 booster, B1067, on the Starlink 12-12 mission on Jan. 10, 2025. This was the first time an orbital class rocket launched for a 25th time and went on to land successfully as well. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now
Update 2:37 p.m. (1937 UTC): SpaceX safely landed the first stage booster on the droneship.
SLS Could Launch A Titan Balloon Mission
Few places in the solar system are better suited to a balloon than Titan. The combination of low gravity and high atmospheric density makes Saturn’s largest moon ideal for a lighter than “air” vehicle, and the idea to put one there has been around for at least two decades. So why haven’t we yet? The simple answer is the size of the necessary balloon is too large for the existing launch platforms. But a team from Boeing, the prime contractor on the Space Launch System (SLS), believes their new launch platform will be capable of getting a large balloon into orbit, along with its necessary scientific payload – and start unlocking the mysteries of this intriguing moon.
Food grows better on the moon than on Mars, scientists find
Scientists expect the moon to have better soil for growing food than the red planet
