On Friday, after 20 years in space and 13 years exploring Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere. “We’ve had an incredible 13-year journey around Saturn, returning data like a giant firehose,” said Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker. “Almost like we’ve taken a magnifying glass to the planet and the rings.” Cassini lifted…
Peggy Whitson has broken a new record for the most days in space by a U.S. astronaut. The record was previously held by Jeff Williams, who had a total of 534. She already held the record for the oldest woman to have gone to space, most spacewalks carried out by a woman, and the first…
NASA scientists have found seven Earth-sized planets in a nearby solar system that could potentially support life, the U.S. space agency said Wednesday. The planets, all with the potential to hold life-sustaining liquid water, are orbiting a single dwarf star about 40 light-years away. Scientists initially reported the system last year, but at that point…
President Obama on Tuesday announced the U.S. has partnered with private firms in the goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s. Obama wrote in an essay for CNN that the government’s “ultimate ambition” is to one day “remain there for an extended time.” He wrote that astronauts will be sent to the International…
The first spacecraft to orbit a comet ended its mission Friday by safely landing on the frozen body it had tracked or the past two years. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe made a confirmed landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at roughly 2 miles per hour before sending its final radio signal back to the mission-control…
In an article published by Nature World News on Wednesday, researchers announced the discovery of a new “Earth-like” planet orbiting a star not far from our sun. The planet has not been named yet, but was found circling the star Proxima Centauri—a “cool, tiny red dwarf” scientists have long suspected might be capable of having…
NASA spacecraft’s Juno is officially orbiting Jupiter, the probe has sent back its first image as proof. “We’re quite pleased that we survived going through Jupiter orbit insertion,” said Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, one of the scientists responsible for the operation of the probe’s camera, known as the JunoCam. “The fact it’s a beautiful image is already…
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will reach Jupiter on Monday, the three-second beep marking its arrival is expected around 11:53 p.m. EST. The craft will have traveled nearly 2 billion miles in five years. “I can tell you when that completes, you’re going to see a lot of celebration,” said Juno’s project manager, Rick Nybakken, “because that…
China has put the final piece into position on what will be the world’s biggest radio telescope, which will be used to explore space and seek out extraterrestrial life. The Five Hundred Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope is cut out of the side of a mountain and is the size of 30 football fields. The massive…
SpaceX launched a Thai communi-cations satellite Friday afternoon, and its first-stage rocket booster landed on a floating target in the Atlantic Ocean, marking the company’s third successful sea landing.The rocket launched at 2:39 p.m. PDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
For more than seven hours on Monday, Mercury will appear as a black dot on the face of the sun in an event that happens only about 13 times per century. For the first time in 10 years, Earth-dwellers can watch the planetary event, which started at about 7 a.m. ET. Astronomers caution that those…
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to earth on Wednesday after a 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. The tour marked the longest trip by a NASA astronaut and was considered twice the length of a normal stay. Their extended trip was part of an effort to examine the effects…
Today marks 30 years since the Shuttle Challenger had a booster engine fail, causing the shuttle to break apart and kill all seven crew members on board. It happened just 73 seconds after launch on the morning of January 28, 1986. President Ronald Reagan eulogized the crew, quoting from the poem High Flight: “We will…
A SpaceX rocket exploded on Sunday after breaking a support leg while landing on a barge in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket successfully delivered a U.S.-European ocean-monitoring satellite into orbit, but failed to land upright on a floating platform and caused a fiery explosion. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted a video of the landing on…
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream Tim Peake is officially on a spacewalk! British astronaut Tim Peake is now outside the International Space Station, on his first spacewalk. Major Peake is stepping into space as part of a six-and-a-half-hour mission to repair a broken power unit. “It’s a privilege,” he said in response to station…
Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket Monday, marking the first time a large rocket has delivered spacecraft to orbit and returned to earth intact. Rockets have traditionally been disposed of after they detach from spacecraft, but SpaceX’s landing and ability to recover it after an obital flight signals…
The space object named WT1190F, has a bunch of social media users attention for its peculiarly funny name and mysterious nature. Although it is still unidentified, it is predicted by scientists to plunge into the Indian Ocean on Friday the 13th next month. Astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA) clarified that the impact of…
NASA has discovered signs of liquid water on Mars, it announced at a press conference Monday morning. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet we thought,” NASA official Jim Green announced. Liquid water has never been detected outside of Earth. NASA found evidence that water formed dark streaks on the Martian surface known as as…
NASA’s Kepler mission confirms the discovery of the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like, G2-type star. It is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Called Kepler-452b, the planet is thought of as the “older, bigger cousin to Earth.” It has a 385-day orbit around is located 5% farther from…
The NASA New Horizons spacecraft had its closest encounter with Pluto on Tuesday after a nine-a-half-year journey to the dwarf planet. YES! After over 9 years & 3+ billion miles, @NASANewHorizons #PlutoFlyby was at 7:49am ET. http://t.co/Czrvonxugd pic.twitter.com/aSucgORofT — NASA (@NASA) July 14, 2015 NASA tweeted a “sneak peek” view of Pluto, a stunning color…
A newly released map of Pluto, made from images from the New Horizons space probe, shows distinctive markings, including shapes of a whale and a doughnut on the dwarf planet’s surface. The map, made of images gathered between June 27 and July 3, is not as sharp as what was expected after the probe’s historic…
After nearly a week of weather-related delays, NASA has sent up a rocket-powered “flying saucer” to test technologies that could someday help get heavy payloads to Mars.
NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, which made history four years ago when entering the orbit around Mercury, is preparing to crash onto the planet’s surface later this month, NASA said Thursday. The car-sized probe will become the first human-made object to fall to Mercury’s surface.
Astronaut Scott Kelly will start NASA’s greatest space journey when he and two Russian associates will take off for a yearlong assignment in the International Space Station. The longest preceding NASA excursions have just last as long as around six months. Scientists will compare Kelly’s health while in space to that of his twin brother,…
SpaceX scrubbed Tuesday’s attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station and make a historic rocket landing. The next possible launch attempt is on Friday.
Results released Wednesday from Europe’s Rosetta mission pokes serious holes in the theory that most of the water on Earth came from comets. Observations from the mission show water vapor found on comet 67P is unlike the water we live with on Earth. Scientists will continue to collect data on how the comet behaves for…
NASA successfully launched its Orion spacecraft on Friday, and it is now chugging along over Earth at 15,000 mph on its way to its preliminary orbit. While today’s test launch is unmanned, the hope is that crewed missions to Mars will be possible by 2021. The original launch on Thursday had been scrapped due to…
BACKSTREAM IS HERE AT NASA Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream NASA is planning to launch an unmanned test flight of its new Orion spacecraft today. The test flight will commence with a sunrise liftoff in a first attempt to ready the spacecraft to eventually be used to carry people to Mars in future decades.…
NASA briefed the public Tuesday on a test flight Thursday that will launch the unmanned capsule Orion, which NASA scientists hope one day will carry humans to Mars. Thursday’s test will assess the spacecraft’s heat shield and a variety of other systems. Orion could eventually carry human astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s.
Astronauts struggle to sleep in space, potentially putting their lives at risk, a new study has found. “The ability for a crew member to optimally perform if awakened from sleep by an emergency alarm may be jeopardised by the use of sleep-promoting pharmaceuticals,” the study said. [itv]
