Astronomy news

• Move over He-Man, Mattel's Major Matt Mason space toys could still be blasting off for Hollywood

  01-08-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  As evidenced by Paramount's live-action "Transformers" movies and the recent "Masters of the Universe" film released by Amazon MGM Studios, nostalgic toy lines can serve as fertile grounds for a variety of engaging Hollywood projects leaning into vintage intellectual properties.With Mattel ramping up their own film production efforts and toy-to-screen endeavors after enormous success with "The Barbie Movie" and hi-octane plans for Hot Wheels movies rolling into theaters, the toys-to-silver scree
  
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• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 221 — Starship Can Float?

  01-08-2026 16:16 via space.com
  
  On Episode 221 of This Week In Space, Tariq Malik and guest host Rick Jenet of the National Space Society talk about SpaceX's Starship Flight 13, which deployed new Starlink V3 satellites and stunned viewers when theship survived reentry intact enough to float in the ocean for daysafterward.They also discuss NASA's Roman Space Telescope, now just a month fromlaunch, and an in-progress emergency effort to save the ailing SwiftSpace Observatory using a servicing spacecraft that is itself nowexperi
  
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• On this day in space! Aug. 1, 1968: NASA ends production of Saturn V moon rocket

  01-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  On Aug. 1, 1968, NASA canceled the production of its Saturn V moon rocket. At the time, the giant rocket was the only launch vehicle to have ever carried astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, and it was then the largest, most powerful rocket ever. NASA built 15 of these rockets but only flew 13 of them. When NASA made the decision to stop building the Saturn V, it was almost a year before Apollo 11 astronauts would walk on the moon for the first time. 10 Surprising Facts About NASA's Mighty Saturn
  
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• Dinosaur-killing asteroid may have caused firestorms 17 times hotter than the thermal limit lethal to humans

  01-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Scientists once suspected that a brutal, years-long winter starved the dinosaurs following an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. New evidence suggests a more violent end: widespread firestorms that may have burned even thick-skinned dinosaurs to a crisp within hours.The roughly six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, excavating the Chicxulub crater and vaporizing enormous quantities of rock. Some of that material condensed into tiny droplets called
  
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• 'Flight of the Navigator' at 40: the Disney space movie that messed with time dilation long before 'Interstellar'

  01-08-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Despite Han Solo's protestations to the contrary, travelling faster than light on screen is usually just as straightforward as dusting crops. So whether you're in "Star Wars", "Star Trek" or "Battlestar Galactica", jumping to hyperspace, going to warp or spooling up the FTL really is as simple as popping out to the store.In fact, Albert Einstein's time-dilating general theory of relativity tends to be little more than an afterthought, with films highlighting the inconveniences of interstellar tr
  
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• SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites to orbit from California (photos)

  01-08-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  SpaceX has sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites into orbit.A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 of the broadband spacecraft lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Friday (July 31) at 11:08 p.m. EDT (8:08 p.m. local time; 0308 GMT on Aug. 1).The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 26th mission for this particular booster, which
  
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• SpaceX's Starship seen in space by next-gen Starlink satellite (video)

  01-08-2026 01:27 via space.com
  
  We just got an amazing new view of SpaceX's Starship vehicle, thanks to one of the company's next-gen Starlink satellites.Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, launched on its 13th test flight from South Texas last Friday (July 24). The suborbital jaunt was similar in many respects to past Starship test missions, with one big exception: This time, the vehicle deployed a batch of functional, next-gen Starlink internet satellites into space.Six of those "Starlink V3" spacecraf
  
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• How do supermassive black holes grow? AI finds 7 spacetime-warping 'quasars' that could help solve the mystery

  01-08-2026 00:00 via space.com
  
  Some of the brightest objects in the universe may also hold the key to understanding how galaxies evolve — especially when gravity transforms them into giant cosmic magnifying glasses.Using artificial intelligence to search through data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), astronomers have identified seven promising candidates for quasars acting as gravitational lenses— natural cosmic magnifying glasses created when a massive object's gravity bends and magnifies ligh
  
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