Space News & Blog Articles

A view inside Rocket Lab’s factory in New Zealand, where Electron boosters are lined up in an assembly facility. The rockets with red markings are tagged for recovery missions. Credit: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab said this week that its next mission, set for launch Nov. 10 after delays caused by a coronavirus lockdown in New Zealand, will include the company’s third booster recovery experiment. For the first time, Rocket Lab plans to have a helicopter in the downrange recovery zone to observe the descending booster in preparation for future mid-air catch attempts.

Final report from the high-level advisory group on accelerating the use of space in Europe

ESA Vision: accelerate the use of space

In a new study, male mice exposed to simulated galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) — high-energy radiation in space more commonly known as deep-space radiation — experienced impaired spatial learning.

Video: 00:01:25

Europe’s own satellite navigation system, Galileo, has become the world’s most precise, delivering metre-level accuracy, available anywhere on Earth. It is also saving lives, relaying distress calls for search and rescue. Today there are 26 Galileo satellites in orbit 23 222 km over our heads; the first of them were launched on 21 October 2011, with nine more launches in the following years. The satellites in space are supported by a globe-spanning ground segment. The system as a whole is set to grow, with the first of 12 ‘Batch 3’ about to join the current satellites in orbit and new ‘Galileo Second Generation’ satellites in development.

The detection of interstellar objects in the solar system has raised an interesting question: How much of the solar system is made of foreign material?

The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 mission is lowered on top of its Space Launch System rocket Oct. 20 inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center worked overnight Wednesday to tighten 360 bolts connecting the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 moon mission to the first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, hours after a crane hoisted the deep space capsule atop the booster inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Plumes of ionized gas released by accreting black holes spread across vast distances of the intergalactic space, affecting star formation thousands of lightyears away from their source, a new study showed.

As of today, ESA has appointed three new Directors - for Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement, Earth Observation Programmes and Navigation. The new Directors were appointed by ESA Council at its meeting on 21 October; they will support the Director General with responsibility for activities and overall objectives in their respective directorates.

The full Hunter's Moon will light the way to Uranus in the early morning sky this week, and with some luck you could see a "shooting star" while looking for the celestial pair.

EDITOR’S NOTE: South Korea’s science ministry will stream the Nuri rocket launch live beginning at 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) Thursday, Oct. 21.

UFO enthusiasts who rallied in 2019 to invade Area 51 may have been joking about "storming" the base. But law enforcement officials took the idea very, very seriously.

Days after NASA's new mission to a mysterious group of asteroids launched, spacecraft personnel continue battling an issue with one of the vehicle's two massive solar arrays.

Astronomers may have for the first time detected evidence that a distant planet had its atmosphere partially blown away by a giant impact, a new study finds.

The DART spacecraft is moved into a shipping container last month at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman

A small spacecraft built for a NASA asteroid defense experiment arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California earlier this month and is ready for fueling, one of the final milestones before liftoff in November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

An uncrewed Russian cargo ship will begin swapping parking spots at the International Space Station tonight (Oct. 20) and take just over a day reach its new berth.

A failed Russian spy satellite crashed back to Earth early this morning (Oct. 20), burning up in a brilliant fireball spotted by many observers in the American Midwest.

NASA's next space station launch is set for Halloween and will put four more astronauts into space on a SpaceX rocket.

The COSI mission will study the recent history of star birth, star death, and the formation of chemical elements in the Milky Way.