Astronomy news

• Watch Atlas V rocket launch 29 Amazon Leo broadband satellites early on July 2

  01-07-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  United Launch Alliance (ULA) will launch another batch of Amazon's internet satellites to orbit early Thursday morning (July 2), and you can watch it live.An Atlas V rocket carrying 29 Amazon Leo spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, during a 29-minute window that opens at 12:24 a.m. EDT (0424 GMT).You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of ULA, or directly via the company. Coverage will begin at around midnight EDT (0400 GMT)
  
  Read more

• 'Rocket's Red Glare': How NASA's Artemis 2 moon mission celebrated America's 250th birthday

  01-07-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  It doesn't get more America than giant rockets and missions to the moon.That's why NASA painted two giant "America 250" logos on the rocket that launched the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon earlier this year. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off on April 1, carrying the Orion spacecraft to orbit with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen. Their 10-day mission around the moon and back to Earth began wit
  
  Read more

• This weird 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet has a hotspot in the wrong place, and astronomers aren't sure how

  01-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  Hot Jupiters are some of the most extreme planets in the universe, blazing gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn that exist so close to their stars that they complete orbits in a matter of days. Now, new research may rewrite the definition of these planets that make the solar system look a little bit mundane.The extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, at the heart of this rethink is CoRoT-2 b, a world with 3.5 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.5 times the size of our solar system's largest planet, located ar
  
  Read more

• The growing number of satellites in orbit could soon make telescopes obsolete. 'For astronomy, this would obviously be catastrophic'

  01-07-2026 18:56 via space.com
  
  If the number of satellites in Earth's orbit exceeds 100,000, humanity may lose its ability to study the universe from the planet's surface. That's the conclusion of a study conducted by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) which warns that if existing plans to deploy a million orbiting data centers and tens of thousands sun-reflecting mirrors were to come to fruition, the world's most cutting-edge astronomical telescopes may as well be mothballed."We can reach conditions whe
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• July's planetary lineup is changing — and Venus is the last one standing

  01-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  The three-planet evening show that graced June's twilight sky has now dwindled to one lone survivor.Mercury and Jupiter are now swinging behind the sun and are lost in the bright solar glare. Only Venus remains evident after sunset, and even here the dazzling evening star itself is showing subtle signs of slowly dropping down into the sunset fires; it is getting noticeably lower in the western sky with each passing week.It will pass close to the brightest star in Leo the Lion, Regulus, during th
  
  Read more

• NASA will send a soccer ball to the moon —if the US wins the World Cup

  01-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  Jared Isaacman is doing his best to spur his country on to sporting glory.The NASA chief announced on Tuesday (June 30) that the agency will send a FIFA World Cup 2026 soccer ball to the moon if the U.S. men's national team manages to win the tournament, which is going on right now."So, a little bit of motivation for the United States here on this one," Isaacman said during a livestreamed press event on Tuesday. "We're going to one-up Alan Shepard in the golf game on the lunar surface, and we're
  
  Read more

• Ocean-monitoring satellite spots wildfire smoke from space | Space photo of the day for July 1, 2026

  01-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Swirls of wildfire smoke can be seen over Canada.(Image credit: NASA)Wildfires across the globe can be seen all the way from space. And one unexpected tool has come in handy to spot plumes of wildfire smoke: a satellite designed to study Earth's oceans. What is it? In this photo, we can see swirls of wildfire smoke over the Great Lakes in Canada. Fluffy white clouds float over the land and lakes, in contrast to the wisps of gray smoke, which float out from massive wildfires that ripped through N
  
  Read more

• Stunning new NASA space telescope images reveal the universe in red, white and blue for America 250

  01-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has released four stunning images of cosmic wonders, depicted in red, white and blue to coincide with the United States' 250th anniversary on July 4.The four images reveal superheated gas in a distant galaxy cluster, the swirling spiral galaxy known as Messier 94, a glowing nebula found in our own Milky Way galaxy, and the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, respectively.Along with the colorful cosmic images, the Chandra team produced sonifications in which the data
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• New NASA space telescope images reveal the universe in stunning red, white and blue for America 250

  01-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has released four stunning images of cosmic wonders, depicted in red, white and blue to coincide with the United States' 250th anniversary on July 4.The four images reveal superheated gas in a distant galaxy cluster, the swirling spiral galaxy known as Messier 94, a glowing nebula found in our own Milky Way galaxy, and the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, respectively.Along with the colorful cosmic images, the Chandra team produced sonifications in which the data
  
  Read more

• In 1776, the solar system only had 6 planets. Now, it has 8. Does it end there?

  01-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Over the past 250 years, the number of "planets" in our solar system has ranged from six to nine — and, briefly, even 11 — depending on what astronomers knew at the time and how they defined a planet. As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, that changing tally offers a unique lens on humanity's evolving understanding of the cosmos since 1776.Throughout history, astronomers have discovered new worlds, identified entirely new classes of celestial objects and r
  
  Read more

• Sun unleashes powerful X-class solar flare and Earth-bound CME that could spark northern lights for July 4 weekend

  01-07-2026 12:09 via space.com
  
  A restless Earth-facing sunspot unleashed a powerful X-class solar flare on June 30, triggering radio blackouts across parts of North America. The X1.1 solar flare erupted from sunspot region AR4479, peaking at 4:50 p.m. EDT (2050 GMT) according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. The intense burst of X-rays released during the eruption reached Earth in just over 8 minutes, triggering strong (R3) radio blackouts across the daylight side of Earth. This mainly affected high-frequency radio
  
  Read more

• Powerful X-class solar flare triggers radio blackouts across North America

  01-07-2026 12:09 via space.com
  
  A restless Earth-facing sunspot unleashed a powerful X-class solar flare on June 30, triggering radio blackouts across parts of North America. The X1.1 solar flare erupted from sunspot region AR4479, peaking at 4:50 p.m. EDT (2050 GMT) according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. The intense burst of X-rays released during the eruption reached Earth in just over 8 minutes, triggering strong (R3) radio blackouts across the daylight side of Earth. This mainly affected high-frequency radio
  
  Read more

• NASA audit puts Boeing's Starliner under an even bigger microscope: When will it fly astronauts again?

  01-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  It's unclear when Boeing will be able to send more astronauts to the International Space Station, a new NASA audit warns.Technical issues with Boeing Starliner's spacecraft, across two uncrewed flights and a two-astronaut test mission known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), come under scrutiny in a new report about NASA's Commercial Crew Program from the agency's Office of the Inspector General (OIG)."Many of these [Starliner] issues are related to three longstanding technical challenges that have prev
  
  Read more

Follow @newsl_astronomy on Twitter!