Astronomy news

• Chinese rocket explodes less than 90 seconds after liftoff

  10-08-2026 18:03 via space.com
  
  China's latest rocket launch ended in failure this morning, lighting up the skies with some unwanted fireworks.The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) launched a Long March 7A rocket today (Aug. 10) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, in the country's Hainan province, just after 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT; 8:02 p.m. local time). Around 85 seconds into the launch, the rocket exploded, generating a massive fireball and a cloud of smoke and debris while still soaring
  
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• NASA astronaut Mike Fincke retires after 30 years at the space agency

  13-08-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  Prolific NASA astronaut Mike Fincke has announced his retirement from the U.S. space agency after 30 years of public service. NASA announced Fincke's decision on Wednesday (Aug. 12), celebrating his contributions to spaceflight and long career of accomplishments. “Few people have had the opportunity to shape as many chapters of NASA’s history as Mike Fincke,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that day in a statement. Fincke departs as NASA's fourth-most flown astronaut, ra
  
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• Supermassive black hole spews energy 300,000 light years into deep space

  13-08-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  Supermassive black holes are best known for their immense gravity, pulling in everything that strays too close, even light. But new research suggests these cosmic giants can also hurl enormous amounts of energy outward, driving powerful disturbances that ripple hundreds of thousands of light-years through space.A study led by Satoshi Yamada of Tohoku University in Japan found that winds generated by an actively feeding supermassive black hole are about 100 times more powerful than astronomers pr
  
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• NASA's canceled lunar space station tech will help build the Artemis moon base

  13-08-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  Not every canceled NASA program earns a halo after its demise, but one scrapped project is finding new life by contributing its parts to help the space agency achieve its moon base goals faster. Northrop Grumman is repurposing hardware and technology from the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) space station module for use on a new series of Lunar Infrastructure Demo (LID) missions. HALO was originally designed as the habitation module for NASA's since-cancelled moon-orbiting Gateway space s
  
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• 'The X-Files' creator Chris Carter says new director's cut of 'I Want to Believe' is 'the horror movie that we really wanted to make' (interview)

  13-08-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  Eighteen years later, it still gives me a jump scare, even though I know it's coming.Agent Mulder, hot on the trail of a group of murderers who are harvesting their victims' organs, breaks into a makeshift laboratory in an attempt to save an abducted woman. He finds a gruesome scene of bodies on ice and surgeons, scalpels in hand, preparing to transplant the villain's head onto the abducted woman's body. Mulder turns and  — there it is! The villain's severed head on ice! And it opens
  
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• How to image the planets with a telescope and camera

  13-08-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  The night sky holds endless wonders, but few experiences match the thrill of photographing planets in vivid detail. With even a modest telescope and camera setup, you can capture cloud bands on Jupiter, the majestic rings of Saturn or the polar caps of Mars — images once the preserve of professional observatories. This technique, known as lucky imaging, records short video clips at high frame rates to freeze fleeting moments of steady air, then stacks the sharpest frames into one crisp pho
  
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• Virgin Galactic delays next commercial spaceflight to 2027

  13-08-2026 18:03 via space.com
  
  Virgin Galactic's next customers will have to wait a bit longer to get off the ground. The suborbital space tourism company hasn't been to the final frontier since June 2024. It had been targeting late 2026 for the resumption of commercial service, but that's not going to happen, we learned on Wednesday (Aug. 12)."We've moved our first commercial spaceflight to this coming February to allow additional time to complete avionics and systems installations," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier sa
  
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• The Perseid meteor shower peak was spectacular: Here are our favorite photos

  13-08-2026 17:23 via space.com
  
  The Perseid meteor shower peaked last night in spectacular fashion, dazzling stargazers as countless shooting stars blazed overhead mere hours after a total solar eclipse saw the lunar disk hide the sun over Greenland, Iceland and Spain.Perseid shooting stars appear as Earth enters the debris trail cast off by the icy comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Each year, countless shards of this ancient comet collide with our wandering planet. What follows is truly spectacular. Most are no larger than a particle
  
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• Total solar eclipse stuns skywatchers | Space photo of the day for Aug. 13, 2026

  13-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  The moment just before totality during the Aug. 12, 2026 total solar eclipse, captured from Scoresby Sund near Greenland.(Image credit: Daisy Dobrijevic/Future)The total solar eclipse of Aug. 12, 2026 was one for the books. And this photo, snapped just as the eclipse was about to enter totality, really captures the drama of the moment. What is it?On Aug. 12, 2026, millions of people around the world witnessed a total solar eclipse. This happens when the moon passes in front of the sun, completel
  
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• On this day in space! Aug. 13, 2014: Game-changing WorldView-3 Earth-observing satellite launches to orbit

  13-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  On Aug. 13, 2014, a company called DigitalGlobe launched what was then the sharpest-eyed satellite of all time. WorldView-3 is a high-resolution imaging satellite that can resolve features as small as 1 foot (31 centimeters) across. Its instruments allow it to peer through fog and smoke to see Earth's surface at a level of detail that was unprecedented for a non-governmental spacecraft. WorldView-3 lifted off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
  
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• 'Strange New Worlds' latest lookalike episode is part of a long line of 'Star Trek' doppelganger stories

  13-08-2026 15:15 via space.com
  
  MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "A CASE OF CHIAROSCURO" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.You're on a top-secret mission to recover a lost Federation probe from enemy territory. A close encounter with a Klingon cruiser forces you into hiding on the surface of an alien world, which — thanks, in part, to the local star's radiation making everything appear stylishly monochrome — looks like it's been lifted from a classic 20th-century film
  
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• Number One's doppelganger in 'Strange New Worlds'' latest episode is part of a long line of 'Star Trek' lookalikes

  13-08-2026 15:15 via space.com
  
  MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "A CASE OF CHIAROSCURO" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.You're on a top-secret mission to recover a lost Federation probe from enemy territory. A close encounter with a Klingon cruiser forces you into hiding on the surface of an alien world, which — thanks, in part, to the local star's radiation making everything appear stylishly monochrome — looks like it's been lifted from a classic 20th-century film
  
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• When is the next solar eclipse? Mark your calendar for an upcoming 'ring of fire' and the 'eclipse of the century'

  13-08-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Yesterday (Aug.12), millions of people enjoyed a total solar eclipse as it swept across parts of Greenland, Iceland and Spain, while a partial solar eclipse was visible across much of Europe and northwest Africa. If all that eclipse excitement has you eager for more, the good news is you won't have to wait long, because two remarkable solar eclipses are coming in 2027. First comes a dramatic "ring of fire" annular solar eclipse on Feb 6, followed six months later by the total solar eclipse on Au
  
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• New private 'Perceptor' probes will keep an eye on satellites high above Earth

  13-08-2026 11:30 via space.com
  
  Satellites high above Earth may soon have fewer places to hide.San Francisco-based company Astranis announced today (Aug. 13) that it's developing a line of spacecraft called Perceptor, which will keep an eye on satellite activity in geostationary orbit (GEO).GEO lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth, an altitude at which orbital speed matches our planet's rotational velocity. It's therefore a popular destination for communications, weather and reconnaissance spacecraft — and,
  
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• This year's 'Masters of the Universe' movie wasn't Hollywood's first attempt at capturing the power of He-Man; they tried back in 1987, and failed then too

  12-08-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  For the generation that grew up in the 1980s, the release of the recent big-budget "Masters of the Universe" movie would undoubtedly have conjured up a sense of déjà-vu.Picture the scene. The year is 1987. You've got the action figures and the Castle Grayskull playset, you've watched every episode of the cartoon again and again, and you can recite He-Man's opening credits voiceover by heart. He has the power!Then someone tells you there's a live-action film adaptation coming out. Y
  
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• Total solar eclipse 2026 thrills millions with a stunning cosmic spectacle (photos, video)

  12-08-2026 21:30 via space.com
  
  And just like that, it's over.Total solar eclipses are incredible moments in time, but they are fleeting. As the moon passes directly in front of the sun and its shadow sweeps across Earth's surface, the temperature drops and the light takes on an eerie twilight quality. Birds and other animals go quiet. It's a spectacle unlike any other. And for millions today who were lucky enough to be in the path of totality across Greenland, Iceland and Spain, that's exactly what they experienced. "I cannot
  
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• Total solar eclipse 2026 has begun. Here are the first views of totality

  12-08-2026 20:05 via space.com
  
  The first breathtaking photos of totality for the total solar eclipse 2026 are pouring in, revealing incredible views of the sun's atmosphere radiating out from behind the moon's colossal silhouette.Eclipse chasers have spent the past few hours watching in awe, as the moon transformed the sun into an incandescent crescent in the run up to totality, before swallowing it entirely in the skies over Scoresby Sund, Greenland as seen from the deck of the MS Spitsbergen on the HX Expeditions eclipse vo
  
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• Radiation-shielding vest aced Artemis I lunar test, could protect astronauts on moon and Mars missions

  12-08-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  A radiation-shielding vest might one day protect astronauts from dangerous, random outbursts from the sun, a new study finds.More than 50 years after the final Apollo mission, NASA's Artemis program aims to return humans to the moon. To succeed, this project must protect astronauts from solar radiation, especially the intense and unpredictable radiation from solar storms. Coating an entire spacecraft with a meaningfully thick layer of radiation shielding remains impractical due to weight constra
  
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• Farthest 'black hole star' ever found could help solve the James Webb Space Telescope's little red dot mystery

  12-08-2026 17:05 via space.com
  
  The most distant 'black hole star' yet found, existing in the universe less than 660 million years after the Big Bang, has provided a vital clue as to the origin of the mysterious "little red dots" that populate the James Webb Space Telescope's images of the early universe.The consensus seems to be that these bizarre objects, which were first discovered in 2022, are growing supermassive black holes entombed within huge clouds of gas that have spectrums similar to cool, red stars, such as red gia
  
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• Green comet caught soaring over Namibia | Space photo of the day for Aug. 12, 2026

  12-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Comet 220P/McNaught soaring over Namibia on August 8, 2026. (Image credit: Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger)What a view. Astrophotographers in Namibia have captured a bright green comet soaring overhead in a spectacular new photograph.What is it?In this incredible new photograph is the comet 220P/McNaught. Discovered by Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught, the comet orbits our sun once every 5.5 years. Back in June, the comet reached perihelion, or the closest point in its orbit around
  
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• Perseid meteor shower peaks under perfect skies tonight — here's what to expect

  12-08-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most prolific and impressive meteor showers of the year, peaks tonight! Widely regarded as one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids can produce up to 100 meteors per hour under ideal viewing conditions and weather permitting. This year's display is particularly favorable because the shower peaks on the night of the new moon, leaving skies free from bright moonlight that can wash out fainter meteors. What time should I look?The Perseids can pr
  
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• SpaceX wraps Starlink double header day with the launch of 24 Starlink satellites from California

  12-08-2026 13:48 via space.com
  
  Just over 12 hours after its first liftoff of the day out of Florida's Space Coast, SpaceX has delivered a second batch of Starlink internet satellites to orbit on a rocket lifting off from the company's California launch site. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Aug. 12, at 12:46 p.m. EDT (0346 GMT; 9:46 p.m. local time). The mission, Starlink Group 17-49, carried 24 of the broadband spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO) to join SpaceX's growing constellation of more
  
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• A total solar eclipse will darken the sky for millions today! Here's what you need to know

  12-08-2026 08:00 via space.com
  
  Today (Aug. 12), millions of people across Greenland, Iceland and Spain will witness a total solar eclipse as the moon completely covers the sun, turning day into night, albeit briefly. It's Europe's first total solar eclipse since 1999, and with a maximum of 2 minutes, 18 seconds of totality, it will be worth the wait … weather permitting! Even if you're not inside the path of totality, there's still plenty to see. A dramatic partial solar eclipse will be visible across much of Europe, o
  
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• SpaceX could make $500 billion in 2028, Elon Musk says (video)

  12-08-2026 01:42 via space.com
  
  SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.SpaceX is famous for launching, and landing, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and sending astronauts to space aboard its Dragon crew capsule. Recently, however, the company has been transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) outfit — and that journey is now mostly complete. "Our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September — like, next month — and will significantly exceed all other SpaceX revenue in in
  
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• SpaceX could make $500 billion in 2028, Elon Musk says

  12-08-2026 01:42 via space.com
  
  SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.SpaceX is famous for launching, and landing, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and sending astronauts to space aboard its Dragon crew capsule. Recently, however, the company has been transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) outfit — and that journey is now mostly complete. "Our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September — like, next month — and will significantly exceed all other SpaceX revenue in in
  
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• SpaceX could make $500 billion in 2027, Elon Musk says

  12-08-2026 01:42 via space.com
  
  SpaceX isn't a launch company anymore.SpaceX is famous for launching, and landing, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and sending astronauts to space aboard its Dragon crew capsule. Recently, however, the company has been transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI) outfit — and that journey is now mostly complete. "Our AI revenue will exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September — like, next month — and will significantly exceed all other SpaceX revenue in in
  
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• Scientists create largest 2D map of the universe with 5.6 trillion pixels and nearly 4 billion cosmic objects

  11-08-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  Astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created, offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky.The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys team, contains a staggering 5.6 trillion pixels and combines more than 263,000 telescope exposures collected over more than a decade. The observations span visible and near-infrared wavelengths, providing an e
  
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• Scientists find 2 million active black holes, exploding stars and more, nearly doubling our view of the high-energy universe

  11-08-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  Astronomers have nearly doubled the number of known cosmic X-ray sources, offering the most comprehensive public view yet of the universe's hottest and most energetic objects.The second major public data release from the German-led eROSITA X-ray telescope contains a catalog of nearly 2 million X-ray-emitting objects, including supermassive black holes, galaxy clusters, stars and other extreme cosmic phenomena. The unprecedented dataset — called DR2 — will help astronomers investigate
  
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• 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' cast on taking 'bigger leaps' for season 4's 'outside the box' episodes (interview)

  11-08-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  Season 4 of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is off to a roaring start with episodes already airing centered around primeval dinosaurs, a haunted starship, and a hedonistic pleasure planet. This week's chapter, titled "A Case of Chiaroscuro", airs on Aug. 13 and takes another bold swing, featuring a wartime film noir-style tale with tense galactic politics at its core.We connected with three of "Strange New Worlds'" brightest stars — Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Rebe
  
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• 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds': Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, & Carol Kane on season 4's big leaps and 'outside the box' episodes

  11-08-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  Season 4 of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is off to a roaring start with episodes already airing centered around primeval dinosaurs, a haunted starship, and a hedonistic pleasure planet. This week's chapter, titled "A Case of Chiaroscuro", airs on Aug. 13 and takes another bold swing, featuring a wartime film noir-style tale with tense galactic politics at its core.We connected with three of "Strange New Worlds'" brightest stars — Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Rebe
  
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