Space News & Blog Articles

An Atlas 5 rocket, boosted by an RD-180 main engine and one strap-on solid rocket motor, lifts off from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with a pair of U.S. Space Force tracking satellites. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now

Two satellites for a once-classified U.S. military program to track and inspect other spacecraft in orbit — a mission the Space Force’s top general equates to a “neighborhood watch” capability — lifted off from Cape Canaveral Friday on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.

Artist’s concept of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. Credit: NASA

A NASA astronomy satellite that launched Dec. 9 from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX rocket has started observing the X-ray universe, beginning a mission to study the nature of black holes and the super-dense skeletons left behind by exploded stars.

A red giant star is a dying star in the last stages of stellar evolution. Our own sun will turn into a red giant, expand and engulf the inner planets — possibly even Earth.

Skywatchers in the Western Hemisphere may see a fuel dump from a satellite that launched earlier today on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Black holes can not only rip stars apart, but they can also trigger star formation, as scientists have now seen in a nearby dwarf galaxy.

There are three theories as to how Earth's satellite could have been created.

Our sun just had a medium-sized energy burp.

Earth's star is the largest and the most massive object in the solar system. More than one million Earths could fit inside the sun.

UAP will get more attention from both the scientific community and the federal government in 2022, experts told Space.com.

Although no total or annular solar eclipses occur this year, skywatchers can look forward to two total lunar eclipses — the first ones observable across North America in more than 3 years.

Scientists have for the first time confirmed the merger of two highly eccentric black holes.

Week in images: 17 - 21 January 2022

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission, known as USSF 8, will launch two U.S. Space Force satellites for the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.

Image:

The first-of-its-kind complement of instruments dubbed the ‘space storm hunter’ hangs out in its new location outside the International Space Station in this image taken by on of the Station’s external cameras.

The sun's temperature varies from around 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius) in the core to about 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C) at the surface.

An Atlas V rocket topped with two "neighborhood watch" satellites is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Friday at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT).

The tally is something like 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Does the simulation hypothesis offer a compelling argument, or is it just interesting food for thought? Let's find out.

Watch the sun set from a particularly dark patch of Earth and you may spot a triangle of what scientists call zodiacal light extending from where our star passed below the horizon.