Astronomy news

• Watch SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch 81 satellites early on July 7

  06-07-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch the action live.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads is scheduled to lift off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, during a 95-minute window that opens at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 a.m. local California time).You can watch the mission, which is called Transporter-17, live via SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch.As its name suggests, Transporter-1
  
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• SpaceX launches 81 satellites to orbit from California, lands rocket on ship at sea

  06-07-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  SpaceX launched a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7).A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday at 3:12 a.m. EDT (0412 GMT; 12:12 a.m. local California time), kicking off a mission SpaceX calls Transporter-17.As that name suggests, Transporter-17 is the 17th mission of SpaceX's Transporter rideshare program. The company operates another rideshare series as well, called Bandwagon, which has launched four mis
  
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• More clues surface about the origins of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

  06-07-2026 22:16 via space.com
  
  More evidence that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is much older than our solar system has come to light, along with clues that it formed on the outskirts of the protoplanetary disk belonging to its parent star long ago.Earlier this year, researchers led by Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center revealed that data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggested that 3I/ATLAS is between 10 and 12 billion years old, based on the ratios of its carbon and deuterium isotopes. This
  
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• NASA just found a planet 'hiding' in TESS spacecraft data, all thanks to Einstein

  06-07-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  NASA's exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has a new method for detecting worlds beyond the solar system. The technique relies on a phenomenon introduced by Einstein in his 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity, called gravitational microlensing. The exoplanet in question is called Gaia23bra b. The first hints of this exoplanet were found in 2023 by the now-retired Gaia space telescope via the slight brightening of a star caused by a microlensing event.
  
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• Black holes buried in mysterious 'little red dot' galaxies could blast cosmic ghosts at Earth

  06-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  Mysterious "little red dots" discovered in the early universe by the James Webb Space Telescope could harbor buried black holes that fire high-energy cosmic "ghost particles" through the cosmos.Neutrinos are referred to as ghost particles because as chargeless and near-massless particles, hundreds of trillions of them stream through your body every second at nearly the speed of light. Plus, the source of high-energy neutrinos frequently detected on Earth is something of a mystery. And another co
  
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• Unidentified metal spheres found on Australian beach are 'debris from a foreign rocket body', space agency says

  06-07-2026 18:30 via space.com
  
  Mysterious metallic-looking spheres have appeared on a northeastern Australian beach, prompting the Australian Space Agency to warn residents to be on the lookout for what they state is likely space debris.Australia is investigating the possible space debris incident in conjunction with authorities in Queensland as well as the National Emergency Management Agency, the country's space agency wrote on X late on Sunday (July 5)."The recovered objects appear to be pressure vessels from a space launc
  
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• 'Acceleration without fuel:' Revolutionary superconducting thruster harnesses Earth's magnetic field in 1st orbital test

  06-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  New Zealand company Zenno Astronautics has tested the first of its kind thruster based on superconducting magnets to maintain the position of a satellite in space.Superconducting magnets can convert solar energy directly into momentum in space and provide a source of acceleration that needs no fuel, but until recently, the technology was too large and complex to fit on a satellite. That's no longer the case. Zenno Astronautics, a spin-off from the University of Auckland, has flown its new "Super
  
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• Japan's Hayabusa2 probe captures remarkable photo of a two-headed asteroid 62 million miles away

  06-07-2026 16:20 via space.com
  
  A Japanese spacecraft has gotten up close and personal with yet another asteroid, beaming home stunning new imagery of the distant space rock.On Sunday (July 5), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s Hayabusa2 probe performed a close flyby of asteroid Torifune, a 1,475-foot (450-meter) space rock currently traveling through space some 62 million miles (100 million kilometers) from Earth. It was expected to be one of the closest-ever high-speed passes a spacecraft has had with an astero
  
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• Artemis moon astronauts visit Capitol Hill | Space photo of the day for July 6, 2026

  06-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  The Artemis 2 astronauts look up at footage from their flight during a visit to Capitol Hill.(Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)As we reflect on this past July 4 weekend, and America's 250th birthday, we look to NASA's Artemis II astronauts, who recently reflected on their historic mission during a visit to Capitol Hill.What is it? Following their return to Earth from a 10-day journey around the moonin April, NASA's Artemis II astronauts headed to Capitol Hill. This photograph, captured on May 12,s
  
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• NASA will have to find a way to service its new alien-hunting space telescope

  06-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  Pasadena, California — NASA's new alien-hunting telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), will be serviceable out in space (and it will have gamma-ray detectors, to boot).Do you remember seeing NASA's Space Shuttle astronauts working on the Hubble Space Telescope out in space? Well, it will likely be robots this time around, but NASA is planning for HWO to be serviceable, which means that they will need to figure out a way to work on, repair, and maintain the observatory while it
  
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• Astronomers discover radio signals coming from rare 'Blue Eye Pulsar' after decades of silence

  06-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Silent neutron stars at the center of supernova blast sites may actually be whispering softly, following the detection of faint radio emissions coming from one such object for the first time. The discovery raises the prospect that there could be many more pulsars in our galaxy than we thought.When a massive star explodes as a supernova, the devastation leads to the star's core collapsing under its own gravity to form either a neutron star or a black hole. When a neutron star is formed, it is bor
  
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• 'Once-in-a-millennium' asteroid flyby will be visible to much of the world in 2029

  06-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  Three years before the skyscraper-size asteroid Apophis makes its very close (but safe) flyby of Earth, scientists have already begun charting exactly when and where billions of people can watch it sweep across the sky.Speaking at an "Apophis T-3 Years" workshop held earlier this month at the University of Padua in Italy, retired cartographer Michael Zeiler and astronomer Rick Fienberg shared detailed visibility maps charting the asteroid's passage across Earth's skies. According to their calcul
  
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