Astronomy news

• What happens when a galaxy's supermassive black hole turns off? These dying radio galaxies could show us

  21-08-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  Astronomers have discovered a hitherto unseen population of so-called "radio galaxies" with fading "radio lobes." The discovery reveals what happens when the supermassive black hole engines that power these vast, blooming outflows of plasma stall. This discovery increases our understanding of the life cycles of galaxies.The team behind this research studied 14 candidates for faded or remnant radio galaxies found in a region of the sky over Earth, studied intensely by the XMM-Newton X-ray spacecr
  
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• Trump signs new national space policy to enable 1,000 US rocket launches per year

  21-08-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  The United States is updating its approach to managing spaceflights that lift off and land within its borders, and aims to expand the nation's capabilities to support more than 1,000 rocket launches per year by 2030.President Donald Trump just signed a new National Space Transportation Policy that lays out priorities for commercial, civil and national security missions to orbit. The memorandum, published Thursday (Aug. 20), introduces the first update to the policy since 2013, and comes as comme
  
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• 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' cast talks losing sleep, living up to their character's legacy, and learning to ride a horse for season 4 (interview)

  21-08-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  Filming a high-profile episodic TV series like "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is often a Herculean task for any professional cast and crew, but toss in massive spaceship sets, a colorful constellation of costume changes, tone and stylistic shifts, hand-to-hand combat, horseback riding, and puppets, and you’ve got a mad sci-fi circus.We connected with Ethan Peck (Spock), Christina Chong (La’an Noonien-Singh) and Paul Wesley (James T. Kirk) for Paramount+’s "Star Trek: Strange N
  
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• Trump to award NASA's Artemis II astronauts the Congressional Space Medal of Honor

  21-08-2026 21:30 via space.com
  
  NASA's Artemis II moon astronauts will join a very exclusive club next week.President Donald Trump will award those spaceflyers the Congressional Space Medal of Honor next Friday (Aug. 28) at Johnson Space Center in Houston to recognize their historic journey around the moon this past April.The ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and will feature NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, President Trump and the Artemis II astronauts. You'll be able to watch it live when the time comes.Artemis
  
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• Japan unveils Mars moon sample-return spacecraft ahead of Oct. 19 launch (photos)

  21-08-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  The world just got its first good looks at some hardware that will make spaceflight history.Last Thursday (Aug. 13), Japan unveiled the spacecraft that make up its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which aims to snag samples of the Mars moon Phobos and haul them to Earth — something that has never been done.The big reveal came at Tanegashima Space Center, the site from which MMX will launch toward the Red Planet atop an H3 rocket. And we just got some clarity about when that liftoff
  
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• SpaceX fires up Starship ahead of megarocket’s 1st orbital flight (video)

  21-08-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  SpaceX is picking up the pace of preparations for the next launch of its giant Starship rocket. On Wednesday night (Aug. 19), the company completed a single-engine static fire test with its Ship 41 vehicle, the upper stage that's in line to fly Starship's upcoming Flight 14 mission. As its name suggests, Flight 14 will be Starship's 14th test flight, but it will be the rocket's first launch into orbit, if all goes according to plan. The recent engine burn was designed to prepare for that jaunt.
  
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• 'Dark stars' could be the seeds of supermassive black holes, scientists say

  21-08-2026 17:37 via space.com
  
  A mysterious hum of gravitational waves that fills the cosmos may be the echo of "dark stars" that served as the seeds of the first supermassive black holes.These low-frequency gravitational waves were detected back in 2023 using an array of cosmic lighthouses, or pulsars, in a so-called "pulsar timing array." Pulsars are neutron stars that spin rapidly and regularly while blasting out collimated beams of radiation from their poles that can be used to detect tiny fluctuations in space and time.
  
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• SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites, lands rocket on ship at sea (video, photos)

  21-08-2026 17:28 via space.com
  
  SpaceX launched yet another Starlink mission today (Aug. 21), sending 29 more of the broadband satellites to orbit from Florida's Space Coast.The spacecraft flew aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 11:14 a.m. EDT (1514 GMT). That was a day later than planned; SpaceX scrubbed a liftoff attempt on Thursday (Aug. 20) for reasons that were not immediately clear.The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today, landing ab
  
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• SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites, lands rocket on ship at sea (photos)

  21-08-2026 17:28 via space.com
  
  SpaceX launched yet another Starlink mission today (Aug. 21), sending 29 more of the broadband satellites to orbit from Florida's Space Coast.The spacecraft flew aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 11:14 a.m. EDT (1514 GMT). That was a day later than planned; SpaceX scrubbed a liftoff attempt on Thursday (Aug. 20) for reasons that were not immediately clear.The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today, landing ab
  
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• Ancient stars dazzle in a celestial chandelier | Space photo of the day for Aug. 21, 2026

  21-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  The Chandelier Cluster, or globular cluster NGC 6723, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto)Stars scattered across the cosmos sparkle in the appropriately named Chandelier Cluster. What is it? The Hubble Space Telescope captured this twinkling image of NGC 6723, or the Chandelier Cluster, a globular star cluster located 27,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy. Every bright spot in this mesmerizing cosmic chandelier is an in
  
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• My favorite thing in the night sky appears on Aug. 28 — and it proves Earth is a sphere

  21-08-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  What's your favorite thing in the night sky? Maybe it's the Pleiades, that sparkling open cluster that dominates winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps it's a sight of the Milky Way arching across the summer sky. Or could it be Saturn, a close-up sight of which has many people reaching for their wallets to buy a bigger telescope.My favorite sight? It's us or, rather, our shadow. It's something that's only observable during a partial lunar eclipse — and there's one coming up very soon.
  
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• Could 'dark photons' explain dark matter?

  21-08-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  New research suggests that if dark matter is composed of "dark photons," it would not have heated the early cosmos like scientists previously thought. If correct, this discovery could represent a paradigm shift in the hunt for the universe's most mysterious stuff.Dark matter remains so elusive because, despite outweighing the everyday matter that composes stars, planets, moons and our bodies by a ratio of five to one, it is effectively invisible. That is because it doesn't interact with light. A
  
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