Astronomy news

America 250: From 1776 to the moon and beyond (A Space.com series)

04-07-2026 20:18 via space.com

Happy Fourth of July, Space Fans! As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, we here at Space.com got to thinking. How have things changed in space since 1776? What was the night sky like? What have we learned and where might we go in the next 250 years?The results are what you see below. A series of stories (some serious and some less so) about the last 250 years of space exploration, NASA and American achievements in space and what lies ahead. We even took a look at what Space.com mig

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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 217 — America in Space

04-07-2026 18:26 via space.com

On Episode 217 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the progression of American space efforts.Since 1958, the United States has been part of the spaceflightadventure, and since the mid-1960s has led in just about any categorythat counts. In this episode, we review which flights launched or landed on July 4, and relive some of our very favorite US space missions of all time!Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.Get episodes ad-free with

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Human flight was still 7 years away in 1776. Now, we're headed back to the moon

04-07-2026 16:00 via space.com

Humanity has likely dreamed of flight since the very beginning, marveling at birds soaring overhead and trying to puzzle out their seemingly magical secret. We made some halting steps over the centuries — getting kites aloft in ancient China, for example, and drawing up ambitious but unrealized flying machines during the Renaissance — but our boots were still firmly rooted on the ground when the United States of America was born on July 4, 1776.Things changed just a few years later,

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What did the night sky look like on the 1st Independence Day 250 years ago?

04-07-2026 14:00 via space.com

What did the evening sky look like for Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries on July 4, 1776? As the United States marks its 250th birthday, many astronomy enthusiasts may be asking exactly that. If you stepped outside around 9 p.m. local time on July 5, 1776, the sky would look much as it does today. Only careful measurements would show that the stars were not in quite the same positions they occupy in 2026.To understand the sky more fully, it helps to look at how people

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30 years on, "Independence Day" still proves the versatility of the original "The War of the Worlds"

04-07-2026 13:00 via space.com

"Independence Day" definitely isn't "The War of the Worlds". The characters are all new, the alien invaders don't come from Mars, and HG Wells sure as hell didn't write about spaceships engaging in "Star Wars"-esque dogfights over Victorian England. But here's the contradiction. "Independence Day" totally is "The War of the Worlds". It's about Earth being hopelessly outgunned by aliens from outer space and a human resistance fighting back against impossible odds. It also has, more or less, the s

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