Astronomy news

• SpaceX just launched the 1st-ever nuclear-powered commercial satellite

  07-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  The world's first commercially built nuclear-powered satellite has reached orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) satellite, built by Florida-based company City Labs, launched to space early this morning (July 7) on SpaceX's Transporter-17 rideshare mission. Transporter-17's Falcon 9 rocket, which was carrying a total of 81 payloads, lifted off early this morning from the SpaceX pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and began delivering
  
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• 'That's going to come back and bite us': Former NASA chief questions Artemis moon lander plans

  07-07-2026 17:00 via space.com
  
  The former head of NASA is questioning the agency's plans to return astronauts to the moon, asking whether the crewed landers selected for the Artemis program are the right vehicles to get the job done. Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA administrator during President Donald Trump's first term, joined Space.com's Tariq Malik and co-host Rod Pyle on the This Week in Space podcast on June 12 to discuss his recently appointed position as CEO of Quantum Space and current events in the space industr
  
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• Astronaut flexes his muscles mid-spacewalk | Space photo of the day for July 7, 2026

  07-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  NASA astronaut Chris Williams flexes his muscles while on a spacewalk in this image snapped by fellow astronaut Jessica Meir on June 30, 2026.(Image credit: NASA/Jessica Meir)Mid-spacewalk, one NASA astronaut had to take a moment to show off his muscles. What is it? NASA astronaut Chris Williams recently left the confines of the International Space Station for a 7-hour-and-20-minute spacewalk with fellow astronaut Jessica Meir. This was Williams' second spacewalk and Meir's fifth.In a moment of
  
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• Chinese scientists find the best way to nuke an asteroid on its way to impact Earth

  07-07-2026 15:00 via space.com
  
  How do you stop a large, threatening asteroid on its way to Earth? A new Chinese paper, investigating the issue, suggests a "pre-excavation detonation" could be the solution if there's enough warning time.There may be millions of asteroids in our solar system, with a tiny percentage of them posing a possible, very tiny threat to our planet. NASA and many other entities keep an eye on the skies, and continue discovering new asteroids, but have found no imminent threats yet; Apophis, previously be
  
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• The sun's atmosphere is way hotter than its surface. Scientists may finally know why

  07-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  The mystery of how the sun's corona, which is its outer atmosphere, reaches millions of degrees could have a surprising explanation: cosmic dust riding the magnetic waves carrying plasma on the solar wind."For decades, researchers have focused mainly on how electrons, ions, magnetic fields and plasma waves transport and dissipate energy in the solar atmosphere," said lead researcher Syed Ayaz of the University of Alabama in Huntsville in a statement. "Our work adds a new ingredient to this pictu
  
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• Even astronauts in space saw America 250 fireworks on the Fourth of July. See their ISS view of Los Angeles (video)

  07-07-2026 00:00 via space.com
  
  The U.S. just celebrated its 250th birthday, and Americans living off the planet had a great view of some of the parties down below."The International Space Station orbited over Los Angeles on July 4th as America marked 250 years of independence with a burst of fireworks lighting up the city below — a celebration so bright it reached all the way to space!" NASA officials said on Monday (July 6) via the agency's ISS X account.That post featured a 15-second video captured from the orbiting l
  
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• 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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• NASA tests advanced new Mars rover prototype in the California desert (video)

  05-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  A new rover prototype is teaching NASA scientists how to design robots that can think for themselves and navigate terrain that would leave old rovers stuck in the lunar or Martian dust.The Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain (ERNEST), developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recently completed a 16-mile (26 kilometers) trek through the desert in Southern California. The journey took more than 37 hours of driving time over the course of seven days, and ERNEST completed i
  
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• He-Man and beyond: 20 sci-fi cartoons (some iconic, some weird) that transported '80s and '90s kids to strange new worlds

  05-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  Kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s couldn't enjoy the massive selection of live-action sci-fi TV available right now. With the biggest out-of-this-world adventures likely to be found in theaters, many of the most memorable — and undoubtedly the weirdest — concepts tended to be found in Saturday morning cartoons.This is a realm of exposition-heavy opening credits, relentlessly earwormy theme tunes, and heroes who, for no obvious reason, choose to hang out with cute/annoying [delete
  
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• 10 best Spanish cities to see the total solar eclipse 2026

  05-07-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  For the Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse, Spain's great cities will be pulling in eclipse-chasers from across Europe, but not every famous destination is equally well placed. In Barcelona and Madrid, the eclipse is a near miss — dramatic on paper, yet ultimately disappointing. Madrid gets a 99.96% partial eclipse, which means no totality, so no corona, no twilight sky and no plunge in temperature. Cue a mass exodus from Spain's two biggest cities in search of totality.To experience a tot
  
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• America 250: From 1776 to the moon and beyond (A Space.com series)

  04-07-2026 20:18 via space.com
  
  Happy Fourth of July, Space Fans! As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, we here at Space.com got to thinking. How have things changed in space since 1776? What was the night sky like? What have we learned and where might we go in the next 250 years?The results are what you see below. A series of stories (some serious and some less so) about the last 250 years of space exploration, NASA and American achievements in space and what lies ahead. We even took a look at what Space.com mig
  
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• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 217 — America in Space

  04-07-2026 18:26 via space.com
  
  On Episode 217 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the progression of American space efforts.Since 1958, the United States has been part of the spaceflightadventure, and since the mid-1960s has led in just about any categorythat counts. In this episode, we review which flights launched or landed on July 4, and relive some of our very favorite US space missions of all time!Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.Get episodes ad-free with
  
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• Human flight was still 7 years away in 1776. Now, we're headed back to the moon

  04-07-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  Humanity has likely dreamed of flight since the very beginning, marveling at birds soaring overhead and trying to puzzle out their seemingly magical secret. We made some halting steps over the centuries — getting kites aloft in ancient China, for example, and drawing up ambitious but unrealized flying machines during the Renaissance — but our boots were still firmly rooted on the ground when the United States of America was born on July 4, 1776.Things changed just a few years later,
  
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• What did the night sky look like on the 1st Independence Day 250 years ago?

  04-07-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  What did the evening sky look like for Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries on July 4, 1776? As the United States marks its 250th birthday, many astronomy enthusiasts may be asking exactly that. If you stepped outside around 9 p.m. local time on July 5, 1776, the sky would look much as it does today. Only careful measurements would show that the stars were not in quite the same positions they occupy in 2026.To understand the sky more fully, it helps to look at how people
  
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• 30 years on, "Independence Day" still proves the versatility of the original "The War of the Worlds"

  04-07-2026 13:00 via space.com
  
  "Independence Day" definitely isn't "The War of the Worlds". The characters are all new, the alien invaders don't come from Mars, and HG Wells sure as hell didn't write about spaceships engaging in "Star Wars"-esque dogfights over Victorian England. But here's the contradiction. "Independence Day" totally is "The War of the Worlds". It's about Earth being hopelessly outgunned by aliens from outer space and a human resistance fighting back against impossible odds. It also has, more or less, the s
  
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• How to find Uranus this week, the hardest planet I've ever tried to see

  03-07-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  I used to think Uranus was the sort of planet you graduated into. Saturn and its rings first, obviously. Jupiter and its cloud bands soon after that. Venus, if it's shrinking to a crescent (which it soon will be), and, of course, Mars and its ice caps. But Uranus? The seventh planet feels like something reserved for people with huge telescopes, expensive eyepieces and incredibly lucky atmospheric seeing. It may be considered an ice giant planet, but it's almost four times farther from the sun th
  
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• As 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' turns 35, it's time to accept the truth: Terminator shouldn't be back

  03-07-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  For a franchise where the main hook is time travel, "Terminator" probably wishes it could take us back in time… or just borrow the neuralyzer from "Men in Black" to wipe everybody's mind after everything post-1991. Now, as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" turns 35 this month, we think it's time to call it: Terminator shouldn't be back.The decline of the "Terminator" franchise might be one of the greatest falls from grace ever seen in cinema. The first two movies established themselves as genr
  
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• Could humans someday explore Saturn's moon Titan, or will humanoid robots do it for us?

  03-07-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  BOULDER, Colorado - Humans have been exploring outer space since April 1961 with the pioneering flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.Today, several nations are making new plans to launch human beings back to the moon, then onward to Mars and perhaps beyond. But will that pursuit be short-circuited by the fast-paced merger of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced humanoid robots?That proposition was broached during a Humans to Titan Summit, held here June 11-12, a first-time event attended
  
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• 'Independence Day' at 30: Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin talk blowing up the White House and crafting a true sci-fi classic (interview)

  03-07-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  Happy 30th birthday to "Independence Day," the sci-fi mega blockbuster that made Will Smith an instant Hollywood star, crushed the box office by becoming the fastest film to reach $100 million, and obliterated Washington, D.C, all in one fell swoop of pure popcorn movie entertainment.We often talk about certain works of art ushering in or being ushered in by, but "Independence Day" ("ID4") truly broke the mold for how huge tentpole pictures were marketed three decades ago, something that still r
  
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