On January 3, the Solar Orbiter spotted Mercury passing in front of the Sun. The transit of the small, dark orb puts the scale of our solar system into sharp relief.
In August 2022, SpaceX violated a Federal Aviation Administration safety rule that’s meant to prevent collisions in low Earth orbit, but the proposed fine of $175,000 will hardly serve as a deterrent for a company owned by one of the richest people on Earth.
Six radar observations made of an asteroid swinging by our planet have revealed an unusually oblong space rock. The object is three times as long as it is wide—an irregular shape, as far as asteroids are concerned.
A Virgin Galactic stockholder is taking the company’s execs to task, saying their penchant for covering up major failures encountered during tests of its Unity spaceplane have tanked investors’ chances of winning big in the commercial space race.
Virgin Galactic’s carrier aircraft VMS Eve took to the California skies yesterday for an important two-and-a-half-hour flight test. It’s the latest sign that the Richard Branson-founded company is preparing to resume suborbital flights.
This past Saturday, ex-astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted at SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, criticizing his company for planning to prevent the Ukrainian military from using Starlink to control drone strikes. With typical Muskian bluster, the billionaire said he didn’t want his devices to “enable escalation of the conflict that may…
A decade ago today, the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia unexpectedly found itself under assault from space, as a roughly 60-foot-wide asteroid exploded over the region. It was a shocking reminder that our planet can be struck at any time—and future impacts could be a lot more serious.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent its two years on Mars imaging the planet’s surface and collecting rock samples that will, should all go well, be brought to Earth in the early 2030s.
NASA’s new lunar program is in full swing, thanks to the successful launch and return of the Artemis 1 mission in late 2022. Physics researchers recently determined that the roar of the Space Launch System megarocket was louder than anticipated—but not so loud as the NASA launch that sparked an urban legend.
For the second time in two months, a docked Russian spacecraft at the International Space Station has sprung a coolant leak. Investigators don’t yet know the cause of the latest leak, prompting Russia’s space agency to delay the launch of a ‘lifeboat’ that’s meant to secure the safety of two cosmonauts on board.