Astronomy news

• 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
  
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• How a huge fleet of 17 spacecraft discovered something surprising about solar eruptions

  23-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  A misbehaving coronal mass ejection (CME) that blew out a hidden cloud of charged particles aimed at Earth has been tracked by a record 17 spacecraft spread throughout the solar system, revealing the CME to be surprisingly lopsided.CMEs are "burps" from the sun – huge clouds of magnetized plasma belched out from the sun's hot outer atmosphere, the corona, by the energy resulting from a solar flare. The magnetized CME cloud then expands out into the solar system, and the charged particles t
  
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• Bad weather delays launch of China's historic Chang'e 7 mission to moon's south pole

  23-08-2026 15:54 via space.com
  
  Poor weather has delayed the launch of China's latest moon mission. According to reports, the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin has prompted China's space agency to delay the liftoff of Chang'e 7 significantly — possibly until 2027."China's Chang'e 7 lunar probe does not meet launch conditions, and its launch therefore cannot take place during the planned window this year," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today (Aug. 23), citing the China Manned Space Agen
  
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• Launching 10,000 tiny 'femtosats' to Saturn? NASA funds 18 futuristic spaceflight ideas

  23-08-2026 14:00 via space.com
  
  NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected 18 projects for this year's Phase I awards, which will each split a total of $3.2 million in development funding. NIAC is designed to bolster technology breakthroughs that NASA could use on future space missions.This year's awards include an array of mission concepts and research prop
  
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• How will NASA's astronaut training hub change with commercial space stations?

  22-08-2026 18:00 via space.com
  
  HOUSTON — What does NASA's astronaut training hub look like these days, as the agency aims to bring more commercial space stations into the fold?It's an interesting mix of government and private companies, of space agency personnel and of contractors, all working together to keep U.S. and international astronauts flying through the end of the ISS — currently expected around 2030 — and the new breed of commercial space stations expected to take its place.Canadian reporters like
  
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• 'We Want to Believe' book explores the reality of UFOs: 'It's always going to be more likely that someone is wrong about what they saw' (interview)

  22-08-2026 16:00 via space.com
  
  After all these years, we still want to believe.Whether you're a bona fide believer or a staunch skeptic, we can all agree that UFO legends and lore is a fascinating subject that continues to fuel endless debate. And with pop culture feeding our lizard brains lurid tales of flying saucers and alien invasions, it’s no wonder humanity is always up for a good story of inexplicable aerial sightings or various uncanny encounters of the third kind.In "We Want To Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstre
  
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• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 224 — The Science of Artemis

  22-08-2026 15:24 via space.com
  
  On Episode 224 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and guest co-host Rick Jenet are joined by Dr. David Kring to discuss the where, whys, and hows of the Artemis Program's lunar exploration plans.It has been said that the Moon is a harsh mistress, and nowhere is thismore apparent than at the lunar south pole. That is, however, where theArtemis program is headed, and we need to figure out how to best explorethe region. Kring of the Universities Space ResearchAssociation's Lunar and Planetary Institut
  
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• SpaceX sends 27 Starlink satellites to orbit on 100th Falcon rocket launch of the year (video, photos)

  22-08-2026 14:23 via space.com
  
  SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites this morning (Aug. 22) on a milestone mission for the company's Falcon rocket family.A Falcon 9 carrying 27 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT; 12:25 a.m. local California time). It was the 99th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 100th Falcon mission of 2026 overall. The other flight was performed by a Falcon Heavy, which lofted the telecom satellite Vi
  
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• SpaceX sends 27 Starlink satellites to orbit on 100th Falcon rocket launch of the year (photos)

  22-08-2026 14:23 via space.com
  
  SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites this morning (Aug. 22) on a milestone mission for the company's Falcon rocket family.A Falcon 9 carrying 27 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 3:25 a.m. EDT (0725 GMT; 12:25 a.m. local California time). It was the 99th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, and the 100th Falcon mission of 2026 overall. The other flight was performed by a Falcon Heavy, which lofted the telecom satellite Vi
  
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• Partial lunar eclipse August 2026: Where will it be visible from?

  22-08-2026 12:00 via space.com
  
  Earth's shadow will swallow 96% of the lunar surface overnight on Aug. 27-28, potentially turning the moon a gorgeous shade of crimson as it bathes in light filtered and refracted by our planet's atmosphere. The partial lunar eclipse will occur as Earth passes between the sun and moon during the monthly full moon phase. Around this time, Earth's curved inner shadow will appear to creep across the lunar surface while leaving a thin crescent exposed to direct sunlight at the point of maximum eclip
  
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• 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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• China's Chang'e 7 moon probe will launch this weekend on the most ambitious lunar mission in history

  20-08-2026 23:00 via space.com
  
  China's moon exploration program is readying an ambitious robotic mission, one composed of an orbiter, a lander, a rover, a hopper, and a wide range of international experiments including a U.S.-supported payload. In April of this year, Chang'e-7 hardware was transported to the Wenchang launch site, targeting an Aug. 24 (Beijing time) launch atop a Long March 5 Y14 rocket. The lander's destination is the edge of Shackleton Crater in the lunar south pole region. After launch, the Chang'e-7 orbite
  
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• SpaceX will try for 1st Starship tower catch 'in a few months,' Elon Musk says

  20-08-2026 22:30 via space.com
  
  We'll have to wait a bit longer for a highly anticipated Starship milestone, it appears.On Aug. 4, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said the company aimed to attempt the first-ever catch of Starship's upper stage on the vehicle's next test flight, which is tentatively targeted for late August.But that doesn't seem to be in the cards anymore. "Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months," Musk said early this morning (Aug. 20) via X, the social media platform he boug
  
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• Microbes from Earth may survive on the moon, scientists find

  20-08-2026 22:00 via space.com
  
  Microbes from Earth might survive the harsh surface of the moon, albeit in a state of suspended animation, a new study finds.Previous research suggested the surface of the moon was too harsh for microbes to survive. Specifically, a 2019 study found ultraviolet rays and heat from the sun are the greatest barriers for microbial life on the lunar surface. However, this prior work did not account for the shelter that hills and valleys might supply on the moon. These could prove especially significan
  
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• 'Wet Hot American Summer': The raunchy 2000s teen movie that was actually about a space station falling to Earth

  20-08-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  LOS ANGELES – On a Saturday evening in Los Angeles, I found myself watching acclaimed actor Elizabeth Banks sing Tom Petty songs along with her fellow actors while writer/director David Wain played the drums. This incredible, bizarre performance celebrated the 25th anniversary of the raunchy, summer camp cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer." But do you remember that it's actually a space movie? This movie — the debut feature film from co-creators David Wain and Michael Showalter &m
  
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• 'Wet Hot American Summer': The raunchy 2000s comedy that was actually about a space station falling to Earth

  20-08-2026 21:00 via space.com
  
  LOS ANGELES – On a Saturday evening in Los Angeles, I found myself watching acclaimed actor Elizabeth Banks sing Tom Petty songs along with her fellow actors while writer/director David Wain played the drums. This incredible, bizarre performance celebrated the 25th anniversary of the raunchy, summer camp cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer." But do you remember that it's actually a space movie? This movie — the debut feature film from co-creators David Wain and Michael Showalter &m
  
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• A weather satellite 22,000 miles above Earth saved my 2026 total solar eclipse cruise on the Mediterranean Sea

  20-08-2026 20:00 via space.com
  
  When the 11,000-ton cruise ship Le Boréal set sail from Nice, France, on Thursday, Aug. 6, its 205 passengers and 136 crew members began a voyage whose success would depend not only on careful planning, but also on the ship's ability to outmaneuver clouds at the last critical hour. The ship is owned and operated by the French cruise line Compagnie du Ponant. This eclipse cruise was the result of more than a year's planning by Ponant, and most of those who signed on were there specifically
  
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• Ludicrous, nonsensical, an affront to canon — 'Strange New Worlds'' puppet episode is an instant classic

  20-08-2026 19:00 via space.com
  
  SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "LEVEL-FIVE TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.Back in the late '70s and early '80s, A-list stars were queuing up to guest on "The Muppet Show". Over five glorious seasons, the likes of Steve Martin, Diana Ross and Roger Moore were happy to have themselves upstaged by Kermit the Frog and his legendary felt ensemble. Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca even went on a crossover adventure with the
  
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• Mars Express orbiter captures detailed new video of the crater where Mark Watney was stranded in 'The Martian'

  20-08-2026 18:58 via space.com
  
  Europe's Mars Express orbiter has captured new, stunning imagery flying low over a geological region of the Red Planet shaped by ancient waterflow billions of years ago. Mars Express launched in 2003 and is operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). It's equipped with the High Resolution Stereo Camera, which scans multiple points of perspective across regions of Mars' surface to create 3D color renderings. During a low pass on the spacecraft's highly elliptical orbit, Mars Express flew over th
  
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