Space News & Blog Articles

Perihelion is the point at which an orbiting body is closest to the sun. The word comes from Greek and literally means around (peri) the sun (helios).

Week in images: 4-8 April 2022

It’s never too early to start getting excited — and begin planning — for an event as spectacular as a total solar eclipse.

Earth is made up of several layers: the lithosphere, asthenosphere, lower mantle (also known as mesospheric mantle), outer core and inner core.

Artifacts from the first heavier-than-air powered flying machine, the first spacecraft to carry humans to land on the moon and the first Israeli to fly in space are headed into orbit with Ax-1.

Tune in this Monday 11 April from 15:00-16:30 CEST (13:00-14:30 GMT) for a conversation between ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and media in Europe live on ESA Web TV. 

Image: 3D-printed bone

Since astronomers began finding exoplanets in the 1990s, they've uncovered a lot of hot Jupiters, and now NASA's most venerable telescope is playing meteorologist.

Book your travel, buy your glasses, and get ready for the show of the decade on April 8, 2024

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter completed its 24th Martian flight on Sunday (April 3), a short repositioning hop that covered 154 feet (47 meters) in 69.5 seconds.

The upcoming Ax-1 mission is perhaps the beginning of a new era in human spaceflight — not because of the identity of the private astronauts, but because of the ecosystem that's emerging around them.

The gibbous Moon passes through Leo and Virgo as it waxes toward full, forming new Moon-and-stars "lunarisms" (patterns) each evening. Mercury begins a new apparition in the sunset. At dawn, Jupiter emerges to join the lineup of Venus, Mars, and Saturn.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Axiom’s Ax-1 mission. The Ax-1 mission will carry Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe, and Mark Pathy to the International Space Station. Follow us on Twitter.

SpaceX will launch a former NASA astronaut and three paying customers on a journey to the International Space Station. That mission, called Ax-1, lifts off today (April 8)!

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over part of Sindh – the third-largest province of Pakistan.

A contract signed with Arianespace secures the launch for the third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite. Scheduled to lift off on ESA’s new Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in the first half of 2023, Sentinel-1C will continue the critical task of delivering key radar imagery for a wide range of services, applications and science – all of which benefit society.

The first all-private crewed mission to the International Space Station is ready to fly, mission leaders announced today (April 7).

First came the "Maggots." Then the "Bugs." Now the latest infestation to take over NASA's Astronaut Office has been identified. The 23rd group of astronaut candidates has their nickname, "The Flies."

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION

In just one night of observing, scientists detected a new record-breaker, the most distant megamaser known to date.