Since 2014, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission has been orbiting Mars and gathering data on its upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the Sun and solar wind. In so doing, the mission has shown how billions of years ago, the Martian atmosphere was slowly stripped away by solar wind. This caused Mars to undergo a major shift in its climate, transforming from a warmer planet that had flowing water on its surface to the extremely frigid and desiccated place it is today.
Space News & Blog Articles
Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.
The Rapid Changes We’re Seeing With the Earth’s Magnetic Field Don’t Mean the Poles are About to Flip. This is Normal
One of the most interesting discoveries about Earth in the past few decades concerns the Earth’s magnetic poles. Paleomagnetic records show that the poles have flipped places 183 times in the last 83 million years. That’s about every 450,000 years on average, though there were ten million years between flips in at least two cases.
SpaceX's Starship rocket project can continue in South Texas, FAA review finds
SpaceX can continue developing and testing its huge Starship vehicle in South Texas, provided the company takes pains to mitigate its impact on the area, a long-awaited environmental review has found.
The Gaia Revolution: New Data and Strange Stars
Astronomers will use the newest data release from the Gaia mission to explore stellar tsunamis, Milky Way history, and more.
Strawberry supermoon of June rises on Tuesday. Here's what to expect.
Check out our guide to everything you need to know about today's Strawberry supermoon
A long solar flare just erupted from the sun and the video is stunning
The sun flexed its considerable magnetic muscles today (June 13), and two solar spacecraft captured the show on video.
FAA moves SpaceX a step closer to receiving Starship launch license
An aerial photo of SpaceX’s Starship launch complex near Boca Chica Beach, Texas. Credit: SpaceX
The FAA will require SpaceX to take more than 75 actions to reduce the environmental effects of flying its gigantic 40-story-tall Starship rocket from South Texas, but regulators found no significant impacts and moved SpaceX a step closer to receiving a launch license.
'Dark' black hole wandering the Milky Way may be the smallest yet detected
A rogue black hole wandering the space lanes of our Milky Way galaxy alone could be the smallest black hole yet found.
Best monocular 2022: Quality kit you can use for stargazing
Monoculars aren't just for observing wildlife; they can enhance your stargazing experience too.
Will Earth’s Follies Take Root on Mars? Black Comedy Explores the Frontier
The world’s richest human wants to build a city on Mars: Fifty years ago, Elon Musk’s vision of our future on the Red Planet might have sounded like science fiction — but today, Musk is actually serious about the idea of using billions of dollars from ventures like SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network to finance the move to Mars.
Lego Star Wars The Mandalorian Helmet review
Mando’s helmet is an absolute must for any Star Wars fan. This Lego set is the way.
'Obi-Wan Kenobi' episode three Easter eggs: Darth Vader, Quinlan Vos and Zach Braff?
Obi-Wan’s third outing is stuffed full of Star Wars Easter eggs, trivia, and tidbits that will get force sensitives tingling.
ESA centre to develop Europe’s space economy and promote commercialisation
Entrepreneurs, fledgling firms and established space companies are to receive a boost with the launch of the European Centre for Space Economy and Commerce.
New data from our Milky Way: Gaia's press event
Video: 00:54:56
Watch the replay of the press event "New data from our Milky Way".
'Obi-Wan Kenobi' episode three boasts plenty of action, but old Ben isn't the Jedi he once was
Obi-Wan finally swings his lightsaber around and makes whooshing sounds as Darth Vader makes his return.
With Voyager 1 data mystery, NASA relies on slow, long-distance conversation
NASA's Voyager 1 team is trying to work out why the spacecraft appears to be confused about its location in space, but the mission's distance from Earth makes solving the issue challenging.
Giant galaxy cluster collision triggers vast shock wave stretching over a million light-years long
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted enormous shock waves racing away from a collision of two galaxy clusters.
Jupiter's icy moon Europa will block out a star for lucky skywatchers
Jupiter's moon Europa is set to obscure a star while being shadowed by its own host planet.
Gaia spacecraft: Mapping the Milky Way like never before
Europe's Gaia space telescope creates the most comprehensive map of the Milky Way, allowing astronomers to study our galaxy's distant past, as well as its future.
Gaia data release 3: exploring our multi-dimensional Milky Way
Video: 00:05:00
Since its launch in 2013 ESA’s Gaia observatory has been mapping our galaxy from Lagrange point 2, creating the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. By now two full sets of data have been released, the first set in 2016 and a second one in 2018. These data releases contained stellar positions, distances, motions across the sky, and colour information, among others. Now on 13 June 2022 a third and new full data set will be released. This data release will contain even more and improved information about almost 2 billion stars, Solar System objects and extragalactic sources. It also includes radial velocities for 33 million stars, a five-time increase compared to data release 2. Another novelty in this data set is the largest catalogue yet of binary stars in the Milky Way, which is crucial to understand stellar evolution.
Gaia sees strange stars in most detailed Milky Way survey to date
Today, ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.
