Have you always dreamed of going into space and to explore new worlds and planets? If you have, your dream might sort of come true. NASA has announced that for those who are interested, they can sign up to get themselves a boarding pass to Mars. Now, this doesn’t mean that you will get to […]
Read MoreOn long space voyages, food variety will be key. A new NASA experiment called Veg-PONDS 02, which astronauts just ran on the International Space Station, offers a chance to attain that variety. While the experiment used a food already grown in space — romaine lettuce — future crops could include tomatoes or other plants, NASA […]
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One of NASA’s cubesat satellites captured a stunning aerial view of California’s “City of Stars.” On March 29, a small satellite called ASTERIA — the Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics — spied on the Golden State, capturing views of the greater Los Angeles area and the massive grid of illuminated city streets and […]
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Your name could take flight to Mars next year. NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names to fly aboard the life-hunting Mars 2020 rover, which is scheduled to launch next summer and touch down on the Red Planet in February 2021. “As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, […]
Read MoreThe moon will make a close pass to Saturn this evening (May 22), so close that our natural satellite will block the view of the ringed planet for skywatchers in parts of the world. In parts of southern Africa and Antarctica, skywatchers will see Saturn play “peekaboo” with the moon. Elsewhere in the world, the […]
Read MoreA group of undergraduates launched what is likely the first-ever student designed and student-built rocket past the boundary of space, the University of Southern California (USC) announced today (May 22). Their achievement, if confirmed, completes a decade-long informal competition among engineering schools worldwide to create the first university rocket to achieve spaceflight, officials from USC’s […]
Read MoreNEW YORK — The 2019 World Science Festival kicks off this week in New York City! Space.com spoke with theoretical physicist and science communicator Brian Greene, who co-founded the event in 2008 with his wife, journalist Tracy Day. The series is designed, according to Greene, to appeal to a wide range of audiences, both local […]
Read MoreThe universe through the eyes of an astronomer or astrophysicist is a fascinating place — and a good book can give you a glimpse of that world without requiring years of study. Here are the Space.com writers’ and editors’ recommendations of astronomy and astrophysics books that will thrill, puzzle, intrigue and blow your mind. (We are […]
Read MoreNew video views of Earth show our planet in stunning high-definition, courtesy of a newly-launched 4K video-streaming platform. The new platform, from British company Sen, features six video cameras in space. Two can be steered to capture wide-angle imagery of Earth — or peer at their spacecraft. Sen recently launched its video cameras (and a […]
Read MoreRocky was napping in a doghouse in Costa Rica on April 23 when a small meteorite punctured the roof. The dog was unharmed, but couldn’t hope to match scientists’ interest in fetching the stray meteorite. That’s because Rocky’s space rock was just one piece of a clay-rich meteorite that crashed to Earth over the town […]
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The satellites that SpaceX is about to launch to Earth orbit could help humanity settle the moon and Mars someday. On Thursday (May 23), SpaceX plans to loft the first 60 spacecraft of its planned Starlink megaconstellation, which is designed to provide affordable internet service to people around the world. But don’t expect a signal […]
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The world’s largest atom smasher might be losing its dark matter. But physicists are getting a clearer picture of what that lost dark matter might look like — if it even exists. ATLAS, the detector of very large particles at the Geneva-based Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is best-known for discovering the Higgs boson back in […]
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The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has successfully launched its new Earth observation satellite RISAT-2B into orbit. It lifted off on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle designated PSLV-C46 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on May 21, 2019 at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT, or 5:30 a.m. local time on May 22). […]
Read MoreIndia’s space agency successfully launched a new Earth-observation satellite today (May 21), boosting the nation’s space-based surveillance capabilities. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) used a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle designated PSLV-C46 to launch its third radar imaging satellite, named RISAT-2B, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. The rocket lifted off at […]
Read MoreIndia is launching a new Earth-observation satellite today (May 21), and you can watch it lift off live online! The spacecraft, called Radar Imaging Satellite-2B (RISAT-2B), will lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle at 7:57 p.m. EDT (2357 GMT, or 5:27 a.m. local […]
Read MoreNASA’s next Mars rover continues to gear up for its launch toward the Red Planet next summer. Earlier this month, engineers put the Mars 2020 rover’s fully assembled spacecraft through some tests at the Space Simulator Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The spacecraft consists of the cruise stage, which will […]
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LAST UPDATED May 21: These dates are subject to change, and will be updated throughout the year as firmer dates arise. Please DO NOT schedule travel based on a date you see here. Launch dates collected from NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, Spaceflight Now and others. Watch NASA webcasts and other live launch coverage on our Watch Live page, and see our night sky webcasts […]
Read MoreNASA is getting ready to launch living creatures to deep space for the first time in nearly five decades. Agency engineers are putting together a briefcase-size spacecraft called BioSentinel, which will carry yeast cells into orbit around the sun to help scientists better understand the radiation environment beyond our planet’s protective magnetic bubble. BioSentinel is […]
Read MoreThe newly translated book “Finding Our Place in the Universe,” out today (May 21), details how scientists discovered the vast supercluster of galaxies that contains the Milky Way — using careful calculations to reveal the supercluster’s intricate, feathery shape. In 2014, the French astrophysicist Hélène Courtois was part of a research team that discovered the […]
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Gamma-rays are the highest-energy form of light in the universe. They burst out of distant galaxies following some of space’s most extreme events — massive suns exploding, hyper-dense neutron stars crashing into one another, black holes gobbling up worlds of matter, etc. — and, when they do, their glow briefly outshines every other light in […]
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