A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks away from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during the Starlink 10-25 mission on July 2, 2025. This was SpaceX’s 500th Falcon 9 rocket launch to date. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now
Update July 2, 3 a.m. EDT: SpaceX landed its first stage booster on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas.’
The second of the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellites and the first instrument for the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission lifted off at 23:04 CEST on Tuesday, 1 July. The satellite is now on its way to monitor Earth’s atmosphere from an altitude of 36 000 km. From this geostationary orbit, the missions can provide game-changing data for forecasting severe storms and air pollution over Europe.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the MTG-S1 weather satellite for EUMETSAT today (July 1), then came back down to Earth for a landing on a ship at sea.
Cosmic archeologists have used the James Webb Space Telescope to excavate ancient disk galaxies that tell the story of how the Milky Way and other modern galaxies evolved.
The phenomenon is created by the shifting play of light and shadow over the lunar surface.
The Australian company Gilmour Space is back at the launch pad with its Eris-1 rocket, preparing for the country's first orbital launch on July 2.
The Meteosat Third Generation Sounder (MTG-S1) satellite from the European Oganisation for the Exploration of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is encapsulated in SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairings ahead of launch. Image: SpaceX
A European satellite designed to augment both weather monitoring and assessments of air quality and pollution for Europe and North Africa is preparing to take flight from Florida on Tuesday evening.
American companies launched 21 commercial space missions in June 2025, which was a new record for a single month, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Mars rover captured images of low ridges called boxwork patterns, which appear like spiderwebs from space.
A distant cluster of galaxies is wrapped in a vast halo of high-energy particles that could be the work of supermassive black holes or a cosmic particle accelerator.
July 2025 offers a fine chance to check Mercury off of your skywatcher’s life list.
A new quantum recipe for black holes could be the first step toward a theory of "quantum gravity", the "holy grail" of physics.
Image: A powerful heatwave has been gripping large parts of southern Europe. This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission’s Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer on 29 June 2025, reveals the temperature of the land surface.
ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot selected the French chef Anne-Sophie Pic to develop the bonus food she will bring to the International Space Station during her mission εpsilon.
"Its occurrence is like finding a tropical seed in Arctic ice – indicating either an unexpected local environment or long-distance transport in the early solar system."
Scientists have launched menstrual cups into space for the first time, testing whether these reusable devices can withstand the extreme conditions of space travel. The AstroCup mission represents a key step toward giving female astronauts sustainable menstrual health options during long duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
Scientists have developed a new method to identify and map plastic waste in urban areas using satellite imagery, offering new hope for tracking pollution and improving waste management in cities worldwide. The team of researchers led by Elena Aguilar from the San Diego State University, discovered that common plastic materials have unique "fingerprints" when viewed through special infrared light sensors. Just as different materials reflect sunlight differently to our eyes, plastics reflect infrared light in distinctive patterns that satellites can detect. The WorldView-3 satellite, orbiting high above Earth, captures these invisible signatures with remarkable precision, down to areas as small as 4 meters across. This breakthrough could revolutionise how we monitor urban waste, particularly in areas where traditional ground based surveys are difficult or dangerous to conduct.
We've sent some pretty interesting payloads to space since the first satellite (Sputnik 1) launched on October 4th, 1957. As access to space has increased, thanks largely to the commercial space industry, so too have the types of payloads we are sending. Consider the Nyx capsule created by German aerospace startup The Exploration Company, which launched on June 23rd from the Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a Falcon-9 rocket as part of a rideshare mission (Transporter-14). The payload for this flight (dubbed "Mission Possible") included the ashes and DNA of more than 166 deceased people provided by Celestis, a Texas-based memorial spaceflight company.
The Sun isn’t just the center of the solar system—it is the solar system, in terms of mass.
Astronomers have discovered a galaxy that has been "frozen in time" for billions of years. Like a celestial dinosaur fossil, this galaxy could reveal the secrets of cosmic evolution.
NASA's Perseverance rover is digging deeper into Mars' geologic past as it begins grinding into rock surfaces to expose material that could hold clues to the planet's ancient environment and habitability.
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