SpaceX launches 120th Starlink mission of 2025 with midnight hour Falcon 9 flight

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 6-82 mission on Dec. 15, 2025. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now Update Dec. 14, 1:40 a.m. EST (0640 UTC): SpaceX confirms deployment of the Starlink satellites. SpaceX launched its 580th Falcon 9 rocket to date with an overnight flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that flew in the midnight hour. The Continue ReadingSpaceX launches 120th Starlink mission of 2025 with midnight hour Falcon 9 flight

Did a Rogue Planet Reshape Our Solar System?

Researchers have discovered that a close encounter with a rogue planet or brown dwarf during the Sun’s early years could have triggered the reshuffling of our Solar System’s giant planets. Running 3000 simulations of stellar flybys, the team found that substellar objects passing within 20 astronomical units of the young Sun could destabilise the planets’ orbits just enough to match their current configuration without destroying the delicate Kuiper belt. This flyby scenario represents a new possible explanation for one of the Solar System’s defining events, with roughly a 1-5 percent probability depending on how common free floating planets actually are in young star clusters.

A New Window on the Expansion of the Universe

Astronomers at the University of Tokyo have used gravitational lensing to measure how fast the universe is expanding, adding weight to one of cosmology’s most intriguing mysteries. Their technique exploits the way massive galaxies bend light from distant quasars, creating multiple distorted images that arrive at different times. The measurement supports recent observations showing the universe expands faster than predictions based on the early universe suggest, strengthening evidence that the “Hubble tension” represents genuine new physics rather than experimental error.

A new five-year survey of the Magellanic Clouds will answer some questions about our neighbors

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are irregular dwarf galaxies and satellites of the Milky Way. The LMC is about 163,000 light-years away and the SMC is about 206,000 light-years away, and their close proximity makes them excellent laboratories for the study of galaxies in general. The Clouds are the focus of a new research group being formed at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP).

Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 29 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center

File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the first stage booster, 1067, stands at Launch Complex 39A on Aug. 27, 2025, ahead of the 30th flight of this booster. Image: SpaceX SpaceX is planning to launch a Falcon 9 rocket Monday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The Starlink 6-99 mission will add another 29 Starlink V2 Mini satellites to its broadband internet constellation in low Earth orbit. The company has launched more than 3,000 Continue ReadingLive coverage: SpaceX to launch 29 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center

Supernova immersion model suggests Earth-like planets are more common in the universe

Rocky planets like our Earth may be far more common than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. It suggests that when our solar system formed, a nearby supernova (the massive explosion of a star near the end of its life) bathed it in cosmic rays containing the radioactive ingredients to make rocky, dry worlds. This mechanism could be ubiquitous across the galaxy.

Forget Stardust – It Was Star-Ice All Along

Carl Sagan famously said that “We’re all made of star-stuff”. But he didn’t elaborate on how that actually happened. Yes, many of the molecules in our bodies could only have been created in massive supernovae explosions – hence the saying. Scientists have long thought they had the mechanism for how settled – the isotopes created in the supernovae flew here on tiny dust grains (stardust) that eventually accreted into Earth, and later into biological systems. However, a new paper from Martin Bizzarro and his co-authors at the University of Copenhagen upends that theory by showing that much of the material created in supernovae is captured in ice as it travels the interstellar medium. It also suggests that the Earth itself formed through the Pebble Accretion model rather than massive protoplanets slamming together.