Today ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet became commander of the International Space Station, taking over from Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut and fellow Crew-2 member Akihiko Hoshide. Thomas will hold this role until shortly before Crew-2 return to Earth in November.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Payload issue delays SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch to early 2022
File photo of the most recent Falcon Heavy launch in June 2019. Credit: SpaceX
The next flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, previously scheduled for this month, has been pushed back to early 2022 after more delays caused by its U.S. military payload, a Space Force spokesperson said.
Blue Origin says ‘Star Trek’ actor William Shatner will fly to space next week
Actor William Shatner. Credit: NASA
Blue Origin confirmed Monday that actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on “Star Trek,” will fly into space on a suborbital launch Oct. 12 from West Texas.
Did Astronomers See a Distant, Dying Star? Or an Earth-bound Satellite?
What seemed a lucky break — the discovery of a gamma-ray burst in the most distant known galaxy — might instead be the flash of passing space debris. As satellites fill low-Earth orbit, such events might become common.
Destiny | Space Station 360 (in French with English subtitles available)
Video: 00:02:06
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet takes you on a tour of the International Space Station like no other. Filmed with a 360 camera, the Space Station 360 series lets you explore for yourself alongside Thomas’s explanation – episode seven is NASA’s Destiny laboratory.
It’ll Soon be Possible to Make Satellite Phone Calls With Your Regular Phone
Not all who wander are lost – but sometimes their cell phone reception is. That might change soon if a plan to project basic cell phone coverage to all parts of the globe comes to fruition. Lynk has already proven it can use a typical smartphone to bound a standard SMS text message off a low-earth-orbiting satellite, and they don’t plan to stop there.
Here’s Perseverance, Seen From Space
The Mars Perseverance rover is on the move! The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the rover from above, the first view since shortly after the rover landed in February 2021. Perseverance appears as the white speck in the center of the image above, in the the “South Séítah” area of Mars’ Jezero Crater.
Russia will launch a film crew to the International Space Station Tuesday and you can watch it live
A cosmonaut, a film director and an actor will launch on a mission Tuesday (Oct. 5) in part to film a movie on the International Space Station, and you can watch it live.
First Copernicus satellite exceeds design working life
This week marks seven years since the very first satellite that ESA built for the European Union’s Copernicus programme started delivering data to monitor the environment. The Sentinel-1A satellite has shed new light on our changing world and has been key to supplying a wealth of radar imagery to aid disaster response. While this remarkable satellite may have been designed for an operational life of seven years, it is still going strong and fully expected to be in service for several years to come.
Meeting Mercury
Video: 00:01:01
A beautiful sequence of 53 images taken by the monitoring cameras on board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission as the spacecraft made its first close flyby of its destination planet Mercury on 1 October 2021.
The compilation includes images from two of the three Monitoring Cameras (MCAM) onboard the Mercury Transfer Module, which provides black-and-white snapshots at 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. It is not possible to image with the high-resolution camera suite during the cruise phase. The MCAMs also capture parts of the spacecraft: MCAM-2 sees the medium-gain antenna and magnetometer boom, while the high-gain antenna is in the MCAM-3 field-of-view.
ESA and Mattel’s Barbie in zero-g and she feels fine!
ESA and Mattel have released a Samantha Cristoforetti Barbie doll to coincide with World Space Week 2021 and its theme of ‘Women in Space’, to help encourage girls to become the next generation of astronauts, engineers and space scientists.
Astronomers Look at Super-Earths That had Their Atmospheres Stripped Away by Their Stars
As the planets of our Solar System demonstrate, understanding the solar dynamics of a system is a crucial aspect of determining habitability. Because of its protective magnetic field, Earth has maintained a fluffy atmosphere for billions of years, ensuring a stable climate for life to evolve. In contrast, other rocky planets that orbit our Sun are either airless, have super-dense (Venus), or have very thin atmospheres (Mars) due to their interactions with the Sun.
BepiColombo to Fly By Mercury Tonight
BepiColombo is set to make the first of several flybys past Mercury on Friday, October 1st.
October: Three Planets at Dusk
Take advantage of October's crisp, clear evenings and early-arriving dawns to explore the nighttime sky with our audio guided tour.
Cosmonaut shares new perspective of International Space Station
A view of the International Space Station captured Sept. 28 by a cosmonaut on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. Credit: Roscosmos
Photos taken by a Russian cosmonaut Tuesday from a Soyuz spacecraft show new exterior views of the International Space Station, with two SpaceX Dragon spaceships, a Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply craft, and the lab’s new roll-out solar arrays visible.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, October 1 – 9
Venus shines in twilight; watch Antares and the head of Scorpius slide toward it. Check out Jupiter, and hop from Saturn to two binocular double stars. The evenings are dark for deep-sky observing; the waning Moon crosses Leo before dawn.
SpaceX cargo ship streaks across Florida on the way to splashdown
A SpaceX supply ship blazed a trail through the atmosphere over the southeastern United States Thursday night and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida, returning home with 2.3 tons of research specimens and cargo from the International Space Station.
Comet 29P Undergoes Brightest Outburst in Recent Years
Catch one of the most active small bodies in the solar system during a rare superoutburst.
Cassiopeia Cornucopia — Pretty Little Clusters All in a Row
See nine unique open clusters in Cassiopeia while barely moving your telescope.
What Is a Quasar?
A quasar is a supermassive black hole gorging on gas in the heart of a distant galaxy.
