NASA astronauts practiced using a SpaceX Starship elevator to send cargo and other items into the spacecraft. Starship is targeted to land humans on the moon in the 2020s.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Live coverage: SpaceX takes second swing at launching Falcon Heavy rocket, X-37B military spaceplane
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket stands ready to launch the X-37B military spaceplane on Dec. 11, 2023. The mission was scrubbed due to poor weather and ground issues in mid-December. Image: Adam Bernstein
For the second time this month, SpaceX is gearing up to launch the X-37B military spaceplane onboard its Falcon Heavy rocket. Liftoff of the USSF-52 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is set for 8:07 p.m. EST (0107 UTC) on Thursday at the opening of a ten-minute launch window.
SpaceX is launching Starlink satellites today and you can watch live for free
SpaceX will launch 23 new Starlink satellites when its Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Dec. 28, and you can watch live for free.
The best places in the US to experience totality during the April 2024 solar eclipse
A total solar eclipse is coming to the U.S. on April 8, 2024. We've rounded up some of the best places in each state along the path of totality to view the eclipse from.
10 exhilarating spaceflight missions to watch in 2024
From long-awaited rocket launches and lunar landers to crewed flights around the moon, here are a few exciting spaceflight missions to look forward to in 2024.
10 dramatic discoveries about Earth from 2023
2023 was another eventful year for our planet, delivering broken climate records, unprecedented weather disasters and worrisome studies.
Weird particle physics stories that blew our minds in 2023
11 of the biggest stories about the smallest particles from 2023.
Japan's SLIM lander beams moon images home before Jan. 19 landing (photos)
Arriving in orbit on Christmas Day, Japan's lunar lander SLIM has beamed images of the lunar surface home ahead of its planned touchdown on the moon on Jan. 19.
Private Peregrine moon lander is stacked on ULA Vulcan rocket ahead of Jan. 8 launch
Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander was stacked on the rocket that will launch it to space, with final checks and fueling now completed.
After 2 years in space, the James Webb Space Telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?
For decades, measurements of the universe's expansion have suggested a disparity, which threatens to break cosmology as we know it. The James Webb Space Telescope is looking at it.
JWST Sets a New Record, Sees Newly Forming Stars in the Triangulum Galaxy
Our Milky Way bristles with giant molecular clouds birthing stars. Based on what we see here, astronomers assume that the process of star creation also goes on similarly in other galaxies. It makes sense since their stars have to form somehow. Now, thanks to JWST, astronomers have spotted baby stellar objects in a galaxy 2.7 million light-years away. That’s millions of light-years more distant than any previous observations of newly forming stars have reached.
History-making SpaceX Falcon 9 booster mostly destroyed in post-flight topple
The first commercial rocket to launch astronauts has met its end after being destroyed during its latest post-flight recovery. The SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage tipped over after a record 19th flight.
Why Quantum Mechanics Defies Physics
The full, weird story of the quantum world is much too large for a single article, but the period from 1905, when Einstein first published his solution to the photoelectric puzzle, to the 1960’s, when a complete, well-tested, rigorous, and insanely complicated quantum theory of the subatomic world finally emerged, is quite the story.
See December's Full Cold Moon shine in the sky like a Christmas ornament (photos)
The final full moon of 2023, the Cold Moon, rose on Dec. 26. Skywatchers around the globe were primed and ready to capture some fantastic images of the fully illuminated lunar face.
Iron oxide baked into Mesopotamian bricks confirms ancient magnetic field anomaly
About 3,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, brickmakers imprinted the names of their kings into clay bricks. Now, an analysis of the metal grains in those bricks has confirmed a mysterious anomaly in Earth's magnetic field.
NASA outlines plan to deploy burrowing 'cryobots' on icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter
The subsurface oceans of the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter remain our best bet for finding life elsewhere in the solar system. NASA is developing a roadmap for cryobots that could investigate these ocean worlds.
Top 10 Astronomy News Stories of 2023
This year, we heard the low hum of gravitational waves criss-crossing the cosmos, observed a "ring of fire" solar eclipse, and applauded the arrival of asteroid samples. Here are Sky & Telescope's picks for the top news stories in astronomy this year.
12 space medicine findings from 2023 that could help astronauts reach Mars one day
Space medicine is a continuously growing field — and for good reason, if humans want to settle Mars someday.
2023: The year UFOs descended on Washington, DC (but not like you'd expect)
For those who follow news related to UFOs, 2023 will be remembered as the year that UFOs came to Washington, D.C.
Dream Chaser enters final testing ahead of 2024 debut space flight
If all goes to plan, the spacecraft dubbed 'Tenacity' will launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket in 2024.
NASA Astronauts are Trying Out the Starship Lunar Elevator
As NASA continues to ramp up efforts for its Artemis program, which has the goal of landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface, two NASA astronauts recently conducted training with a replica of SpaceX’s Starship human landing system (HLS), albeit on a much smaller scale. Given that Starship is 50 meters (160 feet) tall, and the crew quarters are located near the top of Starship, the HLS will need an elevator with a basket to transport crew and supplies from the crew quarters down to the surface. The purpose of this training is to familiarize astronauts with all aspects of this system, including elevator and gate controls and latches, along with how the astronauts perform these tasks in their bulky astronaut suits, which both astronauts wore during the training.
