Space

A new nanosat has been quietly snapping over 4500 pictures of the Earth and the sky after its launch on May 15th.  Rocketed into orbit on a Falcon 9, the nanosat, known as GEOStare2, actually contains two different telescopes – one focuses on a wide field of view while the other has a much narrower field of view but much ...

The U.S. Space Force’s fifth GPS 3-series navigation satellite was encapsulated inside the payload fairing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket June 9 at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida. Credit: Lockheed Martin Following years of planning, a GPS navigation satellite built by Lockheed Martin will be the first operational U.S. military payload to ride a reused SpaceX booster ...

A Cold War-era missile motor cast with solid propellant in 1966 fired up for the first time Wednesday to catapult a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 1 rocket off a launch pad in Virginia with three small spacecraft for the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency. The Minotaur 1 rocket uses two surplus stages taken from the U.S. Air Force’s stockpiles of Minuteman ...

In the coming days of Atlas V stacking work, two AJ60 solid rocket boosters and the Centaur upper stage with dual RL10A-4-2 engines will be hoisted into place. Starliner attachment occurs next month. Launch is planned for July 30 at 2:53pmEDT (1853 UTC). Photo: ULA United Launch Alliance (ULA) is quite busy at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Central ...

In this week’s edition of new unexplained astronomical phenomena, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Leigh Smith from Cambridge found a star 100 times larger than our sun that nearly disappears from the sky every few decades.  They also have no idea why it does so. The star, called VVV-WIT-08, is located 25,000 light years away, and decreases in ...

Live coverage of China’s Shenzhou 12 mission, a planned three-month expedition to the Tiangong space station. CGTN launch webcast Source

In November of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will make its long-awaited journey to space. This next-generation observatory will observe the cosmos using its advanced infrared suite and reveal many never-before-seen things. By 2024, it will be joined the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), the successor to the Hubble mission that will have 100 times Hubble’s field ...

Chinese astronaut Tang Hongbo (left), commander Nie Haisheng (center), and astronaut Liu Boming (right) inside the Tianhe core module of China’s space station. Credit: CCTV Three Chinese astronauts floated into the country’s new Tiangong space station Thursday, becoming the first people to board China’s outpost in orbit after a successful launch from a military base in the Gobi Desert to ...

In October of 2024, NASA’s Artemis Program will return astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. In the years and decades that follow, multiple space agencies and commercial partners plan to build the infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence on the Moon. An important part of these efforts involves ...

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 soars into the sky over Cape Canaveral Thursday with a GPS navigation satellite. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / A fresh GPS navigation beacon destined to replace a nearly 17-year-old satellite rode into orbit from Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Thursday, marking the first time risk-averse U.S. military space officials have ...