Space

Latest HELSINKI — China’s foreign ministry acknowledged the imminent uncontrolled reentry of the Long March 5B Friday as the orbit of the first stage continued to lose altitude. At a Foreign Ministry regular press conference May 7 spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to a question from Bloomberg stating that it is “common practice across the world

In a galaxy cluster called Abell 3376, some 600 million light-years from Earth, one galaxy has an active supermassive black hole, gobbling up matter at a furious rate – a process that blasts powerful jets of plasma hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, of light-years into intergalactic space. Astronomers have now found that, at a

Big Data is boosting Earth Observation demand, creating new applications and changing traditional business models. As a disruptive innovation, it keeps changing the way EO data is being used. Technologies are no longer the only driver of innovation; this is about how, with innovations being combined, the ecosystem is rapidly maturing — and so are

Evidence seems to be mounting for a geologically and volcanically active Mars. A new, close study of volcanic features on the surface of the red planet has found that a lava deposit on the Elysium Planitia appears to be very recent indeed – as in, within the last 50,000 years. On geological timescales, that’s shockingly

Blackjack PNT payloads will broadcast a new signal that is not dependent on the Global Positioning System WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 million contract to provide positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payloads for the Blackjack program. Blackjack is a DARPA project to demonstrate the military utility of

The Pentagon has said it is tracking a chunk of a Chinese rocket that is expected to come back into the atmosphere in the coming days in an uncontrolled reentry. As of now, it does not know where the debris will land. The exact point where the rocket will enter the atmosphere will be known

WASHINGTON — NASA and Boeing have scheduled a second uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft for July 30. In separate statements, the agency and the company said they were planning to launch the Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 2:53 p.m. Eastern July 30 on the Orbital Flight

The Space Force wants its members to learn programming languages, machine learning and data analysis. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force on May 6 released a vision document that calls on its military and civilian workforce to embrace a “digital culture.” The Space Force’s “Vision for a Digital Service” says the service will need people

Saturn really stands out among the Solar System planets, and not just because of its glorious system of rings. Its magnetic field is also peculiar; unlike other planets, with their off-axis fields, Saturn’s magnetic field is almost perfectly symmetrical around its rotational axis. This odd magnetic field, and the NASA Cassini mission that spent months

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts are in orbit following their early morning launch bound for the International Space Station for the second commercial crew rotation mission aboard the microgravity laboratory. The international crew of astronauts lifted off at 5:49 a.m. EDT Friday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The SpaceX Falcon

WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Starship prototype successfully carried out a brief suborbital flight May 5 after four previous vehicles were destroyed during or shortly after landing. The Starship SN15 vehicle lifted off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, test site at 6:24 p.m. Eastern. The vehicle flew to an altitude of approximately 10 kilometers before descending

On Wednesday, SpaceX sent the latest prototype of its mega-rocket system roaring six miles above Texas, its fifth such launch since December. SpaceX is no stranger to Starship launches, but unlike the last four attempts, this prototype landed smoothly, without blowing up during its first 15 minutes back on Earth. A previous prototype exploded 10

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin announced May 5 that it will fly people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for the first time July 20, and will auction off one of the seats on that launch. The company said that, after years of test flights without anyone on board, it will start flying people on New

Onboard computing allows satellites to process data they collect and perform autonomous decision-making WASHINGTON — Loft Orbital announced May 5 it won a small business innovation research (SBIR) contract from the U.S. Space Force to support the development of an edge computer that can analyze data in space. The contract is a Phase 2 SBIR

A large piece of space debris, possibly weighing several tonnes, is currently on an uncontrolled reentry phase (that’s space speak for “out of control”), and parts of it are expected to crash down to Earth over the next few weeks. If that isn’t worrying enough, it is impossible to predict exactly where the pieces that

WASHINGTON — SpaceX continued the deployment of its Starlink broadband megaconstellation May 4 with the second launch of 60 satellites in less than a week. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 3:01 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s second stage released its payload of 60 Starlink satellites 64 minutes later.

We’re now used to seeing beautiful shots of space taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still jaw-dropping in their gorgeousness – and this picture of galaxy cluster Abell 3827 certainly fits that description. What you’re looking at here is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies of different shapes and

HELSINKI — A large rocket stage which launched China’s first space station last week is likely to reenter the atmosphere around May 8 according to early space tracking predictions.  U.S. Department of Defense Spokesperson Mike Howard in a statement May 4 said that “U.S. Space Command is aware of and tracking the location of the

There’s a lot we don’t understand about white dwarf stars, but one mystery may finally have a solution: how do some of these cosmic objects end up having insanely powerful magnetic fields? According to new calculations and modelling, these super-dense objects can have a magnetosphere-generating dynamo – but the strongest white dwarf magnetic fields, a

WASHINGTON — Firefly Aerospace, nearing the first launch of its Alpha rocket, announced May 4 it raised $75 million in a Series A round that values the company at more than $1 billion. The company said the Series A round was led by DADA Holdings, with participating from Astera Institute, Canon Ball LLC, Reuben Brothers