New, specially edited photos show a previously unseen swirl of light surrounding the city-size comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, which is currently racing toward the sun and will later zoom past Earth.
Space News & Blog Articles
Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.
Netflix's 'The Signal' is a lyrical sci-fi miniseries with clever twists and turns (review)
A review of Netflix's newest sci-fi miniseries from Germany, "The Signal."
Marvel at stunning echo of 800-year-old explosion
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In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days. Historical records show that the supernova looked like a temporary ‘star’ in the constellation Cassiopeia shining as bright as Saturn.
SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts share the good and bad of spending 6 months in space
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa spoke about their six months on the space station.
Merging Stars Can Lead to Blue Supergiants
In the constellation of Orion, there is a brilliant bluish-white star. It marks the right foot of the starry hunter. It’s known as Rigel, and it is the most famous example of a blue supergiant star. Blue supergiants are more than 10,000 times brighter than the Sun, with masses 16 – 40 times greater. They are unstable and short-lived, so they should be rare in the galaxy. While they are rare, blue supergiants aren’t as rare as we would expect. A new study may have figured out why.
Gaia Finds Ancient Streams of Stars That Formed the Milky Way
Using ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, astronomers have tracked down two streams of stars that likely formed the foundation of the Milky Way. Named “Shakti and Shiva,” the two streams contain about 10 million stars, all of which are 12 to 13 billion years old and likely came together even before the spiral arms and disk were formed. These star streams are all moving in roughly similar orbits and have similar compositions. Astronomers think they were probably separate galaxies that merged into the Milky Way shortly after the Big Bang.,
Partial: The Solar Eclipse for the Rest of Us
Whether the Sun will become a dented ball or an eerie crescent of fire, a celestial shadow show awaits you anywhere in North and Central America.
Rethinking the Milky Way’s “Galactic Fountain”
The Milky Way recycles gas from dying stars to make new ones — but new observations show pristine gas also comes in from outside our galaxy.
How long will April's total solar eclipse last?
The duration of April's total solar eclipse will depend on where you are watching it from along the path of totality. Here we explain why.
Boeing, NASA target May 1 for first crewed flight of Starliner to the space station
NASA astronauts Suni Williams (left) and Butch Wilmore (right) pose in front of a graphic of the mission patch for the Starliner Crew Flight Test. Image: Will Robinson-Smith/Spaceflight Now
NASA is five weeks away from putting astronauts aboard a new commercial crew capsule. May 1 is the target launch date for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on the Crew Flight Test-1 (CFT-1) mission the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams on board.
What are the true colors of images from the James Webb Space Telescope?
We explore the true colors of images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to see what the cosmos really looks like.
Best geologic map for a European rover on Mars
A team of European scientists have published the most detailed geologic map of Oxia Planum – the landing site for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. This thorough look at the geography and geological history of the area will help the rover scout the once water-rich terrain, in the search for signs of past and present life.
Hubble Telescope witnesses a new star being born in a stunning cosmic light show (image)
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a powerful jet erupting from an envelope of gas and dust that represents a newly born star announcing itself to the cosmos.
Watch India's prototype space plane ace a landing test (video)
The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully carried out a landing test with its prototype space plane last week.
Unveiling the all-new ESA Impact: Dive into our Q1 2024 edition
Unveiling the all-new ESA Impact: Dive into our Q1 2024 edition
Euclid's sight restored
A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible ‘VIS’ instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument’s complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission’s calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.
SMOS and Swarm team up to spot huge solar storm
The Sun erupted over the weekend, flinging electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, even illuminating skies with spectacular aurora borealis. For the first time, ESA’s unlikely space weather duo of SMOS and Swarm tracked the severe solar storm — which warped Earth’s magnetic field.
NASA’s VERITAS Mission Breathes New Life
In a win for planetary scientists, and planetary geologists in particular, it was announced at the recent 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas earlier this month that NASA’s VERITAS mission to the planet Venus has been reinstated into NASA’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget with a scheduled launch date of 2031, with the unofficial announcement coming on the first day of the conference, March 11, 2024, and being officially announced just a few days later. This comes after VERITAS experienced a “soft cancellation” in March of last year when NASA revealed its FY24 budget, providing VERITAS only $1.5 million, which was preceded by the launch of VERITAS being delayed a minimum of three years due to findings from an independent review board in November 2022.
SpaceX fires up Starship rocket ahead of 4th test flight (video)
SpaceX fired the engines on the upper stage of its next Starship vehicle, performing a key test ahead of the giant rocket's fourth test flight.
