Space

Live coverage of the Chinese Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission launching on a Long March 5 rocket. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on  CGTN webcast in English CCTV webcast in Chinese Source

Artist’s concept of the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), at left, and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO). Image Credit: NASA As America prepares for the arrival of a new administration in the White House and awaits its impact on NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon later this decade, Northrop Grumman Corp. has completed its Preliminary Design Review (PDR) ...

The Arecibo Observatory is an iconic institution. Located in Puerto Rico, this National Science Foundation (NSF) observatory was the largest radio telescope in the world between 1963 and 2016. While that honor now goes to the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, Arecibo will forever be recognized for its contributions to everything from radio astronomy to the ...

(23 November 2020 – Addvalue, Inmarsat) The world’s first ever publicly-available, real-time link between satellites in high and low earth orbits is now available, it was announced today. After a five-year collaboration, Inmarsat and Addvalue Innovation are pleased to announce the Commercial Service Introduction (CSI) of their Inter-satellite Data Relay System (IDRS) service, following the successful demonstration of the first ...

A Falcon 9 rocket fires its engines at Cape Canaveral on Sunday in preparation for launch with 60 more Starlink satellites. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now Sixty more Starlink internet satellites are ready to rocket into orbit Sunday night from Cape Canaveral on the 100th flight of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher, and the seventh flight of SpaceX’s reusable ...

This past summer, the Arecibo Observatory suffered major damage when an auxiliary cable that supports the platform above the telescope broke and struck the reflector dish. Immediately thereafter, technicians with the observatory and the University of Central Florida (UCF) began working to stabilize the structure and assess the damage. Unfortunately, about two weeks ago (on Nov. 6th), a second cable ...

(21 November 2020 – ESA) The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite has been launched into orbit around Earth on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Using the latest radar altimetry technology, this new satellite is set to provide a new overview of ocean topography and advance the long-term record of sea-surface height measurements that began in 1992 – measurements that are ...

The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite — named for the former head of NASA’s Earth science division who died of cancer earlier this year — is affixed to the top of the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket awaiting liftoff from the Central Coast of California at 12:17:08 p.m. EST (9:17:08 a.m. PST; 1717:08 GMT) Saturday. The satellite was built by Airbus ...

If you asked someone who was reasonably scientifically literate how Earth got its water, they’d likely tell you it came from asteroids—or maybe comets and planetesimals, too—that crashed into our planet in its early days. There’s detail, nuance, and uncertainty around that idea, but it’s widely believed to be the most likely reason that Earth has so much water. But ...

Back in September, the Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope noticed an object that followed a slight but distinctly curved path in the sky, a telltale sign that it was captured by Earth’s gravity. Initially, this object was thought to be a near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) and was given a standard designation by the Minor Planet Center (2020 SO). However, the Center for Near-Earth ...