Stardust’s mission was to collect samples of the comet in a material called aerogel that was lighter than air! Continue ReadingNASA’s Stardust Mission: The Day We Brought a Comet Back to Earth
If there were an ocean big enough to hold it, Saturn would literally float. Continue ReadingInteresting Space Facts Infographic
It’s getting crowded up there. Over the past few years, the advent of SpaceX’s Starlink and other players in the mega-satellite constellation game are adding an exponential load of satellites and orbital debris to the low Earth orbit environment. But all that goes up, must eventually come down. Now, a new study looks at solar activity over time as a predictor for how reentries trend.
Dust scatters light, absorbs light, re-emits light, and ruins everything. It’s why our maps of the Milky Way were wrong before 1930, and it’s why one of the biggest cosmological announcements of the 2010s quietly evaporated.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has stumbled across an unusual sight: a stack of rocks on the Martian surface. Continue ReadingStrange stacked stones spotted on Mars | Space photo of the day for May 21, 2026
For the July 2026 issue of Astronomy, we’re bringing you our first ever digital-only issue, with all the content you expect in formats for all devices. Here’s how to find it and what to expect when it goes live for subscribers on Friday, May 22. The digital magazine: start here The July issue lives atContinue reading “How to read the July digital issue of Astronomy magazine” The post How to read the July digital issue Continue ReadingHow to read the July digital issue of Astronomy magazine
SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy performs a wet dress rehearsal tanking test in preparation for the 12th integrated test flight of the launch vehicle. Image: SpaceX SpaceX is set to launch the third generation of its Starship rocket as soon as Thursday, May 21, from its company town in southern Texas, called Starbase. The 407-foot-tall (124 m) two-stage rocket will fly on a suborbital mission dubbed Flight 12. The mission will see the Super Heavy booster (Booster Continue ReadingLive coverage: SpaceX to launch first Starship Version 3 rocket
With May’s new moon fading and summer twilight looming, now is the time to plan a dark-sky escape — where location, timing and weather all collide. Continue ReadingHow one disappointing night changed the way I plan my astrotourism adventures
In 1878, Williamina Fleming immigrated to Boston from Scotland with her husband – but he abandoned her shortly after they arrived. Pregnant with their child, she began working as a maid in the house of Harvard College Observatory director Edward Pickering to support herself. Pickering quickly grew impressed with her intelligence and hired Fleming toContinue reading “May 21, 1911: The death of Williamina Fleming” The post May 21, 1911: The death of Williamina Fleming appeared Continue ReadingMay 21, 1911: The death of Williamina Fleming
Neutrinos, the second most common fundamental particles in the universe, are notoriously difficult to detect. So far we’ve only been able to do so by building giant vats of water far underground with hundreds of photodetectors watching for brief flashes of light. But a new CubeSat mission hopes to change that dynamic and enable the neutrino detectors of the future a much less constrained and expensive existence – in space.
It’s a truism among oceanographers that there is more accurate mapping of the surface of the moon and Mars than of the deep-ocean floor. That’s especially true for the Bismarck Sea, a relatively deep body of water north of Papua New Guinea. It’s an ocean basin with a geologically complex seafloor rife with faults, volcanic features, rifts, scarps, and active subduction and spreading zones at depths that make high-resolution sonar mapping challenging.
TESS has released its most complete view of the sky over Earth, revealing the location of 6,000 potential worlds beyond the solar system. Continue ReadingNASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS reveals its most complete look at the night sky yet
Shortly after stage separation on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the payload fairing halves that encapsulated the 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites separated, creating a so-called ‘jellyfish effect’ during the Starlink 10-31 mission on May 21, 2026. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now Update May 21, 7:36 a.m. EDT (1136 UTC): SpaceX confirms deployment of the 29 Starlink satellites. SpaceX launched a batch Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Continue ReadingSpaceX’s sunrise Starlink launch adds 29 satellites to low Earth orbit megaconstellation
Astronomers have identified a possible new member of one of astronomy’s strangest classes of objects: Odd radio circles (ORCs), enormous ring-like structures visible only at radio wavelengths. The newly discovered source, J1248+4826, appears to be the most compact ORC candidate identified so far, with a ring only about 30,000 parsecs across. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on May 6.
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the lofty goal of ferrying humans to Mars and colonizing Earth’s neighboring planet.
There’s a lot riding on the debut flight of SpaceX’s Starship V3 megarocket — including some of NASA’s lunar ambitions. Continue ReadingSpaceX will launch its 1st-ever Starship V3 megarocket today. The stakes couldn’t be higher
Elon Musk announced plans Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever by taking public a space company that is currently losing billions of dollars a year.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set for the debut launch of its latest Starship iteration on Thursday, testing the most powerful version yet of the megarocket as the company targets a blockbuster initial public offering.
Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column. May 20: The Moon checks in on the Beehive Saturn now dominates the predawn sky and Mars is growing easier to view as it rises slightly earlier each day. Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system, is also visible beforeContinue reading “The Sky Today on Thursday, May 21: Check in on Saturn and Mars” The post The Sky Today on Continue ReadingThe Sky Today on Thursday, May 21: Check in on Saturn and Mars
New Mexico State University (NMSU) astronomy graduate student Khagendra Katuwal studied 70 coronal holes on the sun to better understand the connection between solar activity and space weather. His paper was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Some animals can move efficiently beneath granular surfaces. These include the sandfish (Scincus scincus), a lizard native to the Sahara. It can burrow into the sand and then literally “swim” through the desert sand to hunt or escape predators. German researchers are working on a rover wheel design that mimics that swimming motion. In testing, the wheel system outperformed regular wheels.
Exoplanet hunters are keen to find the next extrasolar earthlike planet, one that may harbor life as we know it. But preliminary results from a new study indicate that our galaxy may be filled with a plethora of exo-Venuses. Yet as one exoplanetary researcher notes: the template for such exo-worlds — our own Venus — has been ‘criminally underexplored.’
