Astronomy news

• Another reusable rocket? Japan launches, lands RV-X prototype (video)

  18-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Japan has succeeded in the first-ever flight test of its RV-X experimental reusable rocket prototype. The launch — or hop, considering its duration and distance — took place at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Noshiro test facility on July 11 and lasted about 40 seconds. The 24-foot-tall (7.3 meters) test vehicle, powered by a single engine, rose just over 33 feet (10 m) in the air and traveled a horizontal distance of approximately 50 feet (15 m) across the site's con
  
  Read more

• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 219 — SpaceX Goes to War!

  18-07-2026 15:40 via space.com
  
  On Episode 219 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the space headlines for the past few weeks.It's been busy, and some exciting things are happening! A couple ofcompanies are moving into the space solar power arena — something we'velong advocated — and that's welcome progress. Starship is set to flyStarship test number 13, and a lot is riding on this — the system isoverdue for some proof of concept to keep up with NASA's HLS contract.An exoplanet spotted a d
  
  Read more

• 'We knew we had a lot to live up to': As 'Aliens' turns 40, we chat to the legendary VFX masters who created the Alien Queen (interview)

  18-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  It's almost inconceivable that 40 years have passed since what's been called the greatest sci-fi action film of all time (and not just by us) assaulted theaters with the juiced-up sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, "Alien." Director James Cameron's propulsive vision for a gung-ho military-style movie would call upon Stan Winston Studio's elite creature effects crew from 1984's "The Terminator" — a team that would later work on "Predator," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Jurassic Park,"
  
  Read more

• Beyond the Perseids: 6 meteor showers worth watching this summer

  18-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  The Perseids may be the summer meteor shower everyone marks on the calendar, but they are not the only reason to look up this season. From mid-July through late August, Earth plows through several other streams of comet and asteroid debris, triggering a series of lesser-known meteor showers across Northern Hemisphere skies. Most will not deliver the dazzling hourly rates of the Perseids, and moonlight will spoil some peak nights in 2026. But for patient skywatchers under dark skies, these lesser
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Remembering 'Ulysses 31', the '80s cartoon that transported 'The Odyssey' to outer space

  18-07-2026 00:00 via space.com
  
  It's not known whether "Ulysses 31" was on Christopher Nolan's radar in his teenage years, but it's intriguing to think it could have influenced the director's decision to take on Homer's "The Odyssey". This animated space opera, a French/Japanese co-production, delivered a crash course in Greek mythology to a generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. And, although it looks more like "Star Wars" than Homer's original tale, it had a decent stab at transferring the Classics to the 31st century (
  
  Read more

• These 'metallic' dunes on Mars look like sci-fi. What are they really?

  17-07-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  If you still picture Mars as a monotonous red desert, it may be time for an update.The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has been capturing some of the Red Planet's most surreal landscapes, and its latest images reveal a sprawling field that looks like molten metal frozen across the floor of an ancient Mars crater.The shimmering "waves" aren't metal at all, however. They are dark sand dunes dusted with seasonal frost, much of it carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," that settles on the surfac
  
  Read more

• The Perseid meteor shower starts this week. Here's why you should look up now

  17-07-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  People keep asking me about the total solar eclipse on August 12. That's understandable. For anyone in the Northern Hemisphere, it is shaping up to be a joyous day of astronomy. Totality will cross eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, but much of Europe will see a very deep partial eclipse, and even parts of North America will see a small bite taken from the sun. Then, just hours later, the Perseid meteor shower will peak beneath perfectly moonless skies. What a double-act! The
  
  Read more

• 'Aliens' at 40: Here are 26 reasons why James Cameron's sequel is still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time

  17-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  Making a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" should have been a disaster. This was a movie that defined a whole new sub-genre of outer-space horror, a perfectly structured scarefest that also introduced one of cinema's greatest-ever monsters to the world.Luckily, James Cameron — then one of Hollywood's hottest properties off the back of "The Terminator" — has never been a shrinking violet, and was brave enough to face the Xenomorph challenge head-on. Reinventing the franchi
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Earth's largest particle accelerator opens new window into the early universe just after the Big Bang: 'A culmination of a decades-long quest'

  17-07-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  After more than two decades of searching, scientists have finally observed a phenomenon in a hot and dense particle 'soup' similar to that which filled the cosmos moments after the Big Bang. The observation could help cosmologists better understand the incredibly hot and dense state of the universe in its earliest moments.The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), regularly creates this so-called quark-gluon plasma by smashing together the atomic nuclei of h
  
  Read more

• Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, launches on historic debut flight

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company will make history early Saturday morning (July 18), and you can watch the action live.Skyroot Aerospace plans to launch its Vikram-1 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the Indian barrier island of Sriharikota, on Saturday at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT; 11:30 a.m. India Standard Time). Vikram-1 is the first-ever privately built Indian orbital rocket, so its liftoff could blaze a new trail for the nation and for commercial spaceflight.You can watch the launch live here at S
  
  Read more

• 'The dawn of a new space era': Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, aces debut launch

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company just made spaceflight history.Skyroot Aerospace successfully launched its Vikram-1 rocket to low Earth orbit (LEO) early Saturday morning (July 18), making India just the third country with a private orbital launch capability. The other two are established space powers — the U.S. and China."It is the dawn of a new space era," one of Skyroot's commentators said during the company's launch webcast on Saturday.(Image credit: Skyroot Aerospace)Skyroot Aerospace is based in th
  
  Read more

• Making history: Watch Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, launch early on July 18

  17-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  An Indian company will make history early Saturday morning (July 18), and you can watch the action live.Skyroot Aerospace plans to launch its Vikram-1 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, on the Indian barrier island of Sriharikota, on Saturday at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT; 11:30 a.m. India Standard Time). Vikram-1 is the first-ever privately built Indian orbital rocket, so its liftoff could blaze a new trail for the nation and for commercial spaceflight.You can watch the launch live via Skyro
  
  Read more

• 'The Starry Night' in space: Dark Energy Camera channels a cosmic Van Gogh (video)

  17-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  Reboots and remakes may be all the rage in Hollywood with mixed degrees of success (we don't talk about the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot ... ever), but they aren't so popular in other forms of art such as painting. However, a recent cosmic rework of one of art's most well-regarded pieces could be just as breathtaking as its original counterpart.That's all thanks to the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which has captured a vibrant view of the Corona Australis molecular cloud, that shows the star-for
  
  Read more

• Smoke from devastating Canada wildfires visible from space | Space photo of the day for July 17, 2026

  17-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Smoke from wildfires across Canada travels across both Canada and the U.S. in this satellite image captured by NOAA-21 on July 14, 2026.(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin)The wildfires tearing across Canada are so extreme that the smoke billowing upward can be seen from space. What is it?Over 850 wildfires are currently devastating Canada, as reported by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. The fires are spreading across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario; most remain c
  
  Read more

• The Perseid meteor shower is here! How to see the best shooting stars this summer

  17-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  Look up! The Perseid meteor shower is finally active, bringing the potential for gorgeous shooting stars and fireballs as Earth plunges into the trail of debris shed by the icy comet Swift-Tuttle. Here's what you need to know. The Perseid meteor shower 2026 is set to be a truly magnificent affair and a stark contrast to last year, when moonlight drowned out all but the brightest shooting stars. The shower will reach peak activity overnight on Aug. 12-13 under the dark skies of the new moon. Duri
  
  Read more

• Astronauts just launched on a Soyuz rocket with an energy-drink ad on it, continuing a Russian tradition

  17-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Astronauts just flew to Earth orbit space atop a rocket emblazoned with an energy-drink ad.The Soyuz MS-29 launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday (July 14), from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, used a Soyuz rocket festooned with ads for Лимонад ("Lemonade") LIT ENERGY. The ads are visible in shots of the rocket's rollout on July 11, published here and here via NASA's Flickr account.The Soyuz used for the launch also featu
  
  Read more

• Are we underestimating the threat of solar storms? A 'once-in-a-thousand-year' disaster is worth considering, scientists say

  17-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  The most powerful solar storms to strike Earth may pack a bigger punch than scientists realized, according to a new study that suggests the impacts of extreme space weather have been underestimated.Researchers found evidence that the apparent upper limit on Earth's response to the strongest solar storms may be an artifact of how solar wind has been measured rather than a true physical ceiling. If confirmed, the findings suggest that rare "once-in-a-thousand-year" geomagnetic storms could have a
  
  Read more

• SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 test launch aborts at last second (video)

  17-07-2026 01:12 via space.com
  
  Starship wasn't quite ready to fly today (July 16).SpaceX tried to launch the Starship megarocket on its 13th test flight today but couldn't quite pull it off. Something went wrong just as the giant vehicle's first-stage engines started to fire up, and an abort was triggered.It's too early to say what exactly happened or when SpaceX will try again with Starship Flight 13.SpaceX's second V3 Starship vehicle tries to launch on July 16, 2026. The attempt was aborted at the last second. (Image credi
  
  Read more

• Astronomers discover landslides on Pluto large enough to bury entire cities on Earth

  16-07-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  The aftermath of landslides have been found in images of Pluto's surface taken when the New Horizons mission flew past the dwarf planet in 2015. The landslides are evidence that the icy world is still active, albeit on geological timescales.A team led by geologist Marco Emanuele Discenza pored over images taken by New Horizons' LORRI (Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager) instrument, which was capable of detecting surface features as small as 984 feet (300 meters). They found convincing evidence for
  
  Read more

• Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone

  16-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  This might be the closest we've gotten to finding a planet that could support life: Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like, rocky planet orbiting in the habitable zone around its star, a monumental first. The rocky planet, called LHS 1140 b, is 48-light-years away from Earth and according to this new research, it has an atmosphere that contains helium. It is also the first rocky planet to have an atmosphere be detected directly. This is the first rocky planet to be found wi
  
  Read more

• SpaceX stacks massive Starship rocket ahead of today's Flight 13 test launch (video)

  16-07-2026 19:07 via space.com
  
  Starship is about to take to the skies on a bold new test flight of the world's most powerful rocket. After several days of testing, SpaceX has stacked and readied its massive Starship rocket for its 13th test flight. Liftoff is scheduled to occur today (July 16) during a 90-minute launch window that opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT), from pad 2 at SpaceX's facility in Starbase, Texas.Both stages had been in their respective Starbase hangars for final checkouts following successful engine tests.
  
  Read more

• SpaceX stacks massive Starship rocket ahead of July 20's Flight 13 test launch (video)

  16-07-2026 19:07 via space.com
  
  Starship is about to take to the skies on a bold new test flight of the world's most powerful rocket. After several days of testing, SpaceX has stacked and readied its massive Starship rocket for its 13th test flight. The company tried to launch on Thursday, but that attempt was aborted at the last second. SpaceX is now targeting Monday (July 20), during a 90-minute launch window that opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT), from pad 2 at SpaceX's facility in Starbase, Texas.Both stages had been in th
  
  Read more

• An animated sci-fi rom-com wasn't on our wish list, but we'll be damned if 'Not Alone' doesn't look sweet, stylish, and hilarious

  16-07-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  After cracking into the animation world with family-friendly animated features from the "Despicable Me " and "Minions" franchise, "The Lorax," and the musical menagerie of "Sing," Illumination is finally setting their sights on outer space with next year's "Not Alone.""Not Alone" isn’t due to arrive in theaters until Apr. 16, 2027 but this sneak peek — accompanied by David Bowie's somber 1969 anthem "Space Oddity" — sets a sweet tone telling the lively tale of an introverted ro
  
  Read more

• Stephen Hawking's famous 'leaky' black hole theory gets much-needed update

  16-07-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  There may be an easier way to describe how black holes "leak" energy than the theory Stephen Hawking proposed — and the newly suggested process is similar to how we describe a boiling pot of water. This simple (well, relatively simple) description could be used to model black holes in many situations such as during their formation, mergers with other black holes, eventual evaporation and even explosive death.In the 1970s, legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking wrote a letter to th
  
  Read more

• After a lifetime of waiting, I'll finally witness a total solar eclipse next month on Aug. 12

  16-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  On Aug. 12, I get to fulfil a lifelong ambition. I'll take a flight to Madrid and travel northwest to the city of Valladolid by rail, before striking out for Valoria la Buena — a charming town in central Spain with a population of less than 1,000.There, I'll bear witness to one of the most spectacular naked eye shows that the solar system has to offer: a total solar eclipse. My first total solar eclipse.Don't get me wrong. I've been obsessed with eclipses my entire life. I just haven't fou
  
  Read more

• A laser disappears into the Milky Way's heart | Space photo of the day for July 16, 2026

  16-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  The Gemini South Observatory shoots out a beam of light. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek)A laser star guide beams up from the Gemini South Observatory and into the Milky Way on Cerro Pachón, a mountain in central Chile. What is it? The Gemini South Observatory, located in Chile, is one of two Gemini Observatories with the other located in Hawaii (named Gemini North, or 'Alopeke) on the volcano Mauna Kea. Each Gemini Observatory has a 26.6
  
  Read more

• Watch SpaceX launch 21 'data transport' satellites for US military today

  16-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Starship won't be the only SpaceX rocket flying today, if all goes according to plan.A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (July 16), carrying 21 satellites for the U.S. military's advanced new "Tranche 1 Transport Layer" (T1TL) constellation to orbit.Liftoff will take place during a 22-minute window that opens at 4:22 p.m. EDT (2022 GMT; 1:22 p.m. local California time). You can watch it live via SpaceX beginning about 10 minutes before lau
  
  Read more

• SpaceX launches 21 'data transport' satellites for US military (video, photos)

  16-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Starship isn't the only SpaceX rocket flying today.A Falcon 9 rocket launched from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (July 16), carrying 21 satellites for the U.S. military's advanced new "Tranche 1 Transport Layer" (T1TL) constellation to orbit.Liftoff took place at 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT; 1:32 p.m. local California time). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the Third Tranche 1 Mission for the U.S. Space Development Agency from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 16, 2
  
  Read more

• SpaceX launches 21 'data transport' satellites for US military (photos)

  16-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Starship isn't the only SpaceX rocket flying today.A Falcon 9 rocket launched from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (July 16), carrying 21 satellites for the U.S. military's advanced new "Tranche 1 Transport Layer" (T1TL) constellation to orbit.Liftoff took place at 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT; 1:32 p.m. local California time). The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on a drone ship after launching the Third Tranche 1 Mission for the U.S. Space Development Agency on July 16,
  
  Read more

• Is dark matter 'tuned in' to a hidden dimension?

  16-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Two major mysteries in science, the nature of dark matter and the possible existence of higher dimensions, could be linked, new research suggests. The team behind a new study proposes that dark matter may be so strange and ghost-like because it is in tune with a fifth dimension.When scientists discuss "extra dimensions," they aren't talking about other universes in which another evil version of you exists (and with a beard). Instead, they refer to dimensions that could be "curled up" with realit
  
  Read more

Follow @newsl_astronomy on Twitter!