Space

How a Russian musician creates some of NASA’s coolest images

by @AndrewLiptak Jan 14, 2017, 4:58pm EST

On Friday, NASA released an image of Jupiter taken by the Juno Spacecraft on December 11th. Interestingly, the stunning picture was processed by Russian musician Roman Tkachenko, who took the raw data taken by Juno's cameras to produce the final...

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SpaceX successfully launches its first rocket since last year’s launchpad explosion

by @lorengrush Jan 14, 2017, 2:14pm EST

The Falcon 9 put 10 satellites into orbit for Iridium

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SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 rocket at sea, following first launch since August

by @lorengrush Jan 14, 2017, 1:04pm EST

Touchdown!

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Watch SpaceX launch its first Falcon 9 rocket after September’s launchpad explosion

by @lorengrush Jan 14, 2017, 9:06am EST

Today, SpaceX is hoping to get back to launching — and landing — its rockets again, a little over four months after one of its Falcon 9 vehicles exploded on a Florida launchpad. The company’s vehicle is slated to take off from Vandenberg Air Force...

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SpaceX's finance projections are galactically optimistic

by @chengela Jan 13, 2017, 3:24pm EST

SpaceX lost money in 2015 because of a rocket explosion, according to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The documents also show financial details of the satellite internet business SpaceX hopes to launch to fund its Mars...

The company that wants to mine the Moon has enough money for its first trip there

by @lorengrush Jan 13, 2017, 12:44pm EST

Moon Express — the California-based company with hopes of mining the Moon someday — has received full funding for its first trip to the lunar surface, slated for later this year. The company just raised $20 million in its most recent round of...

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Astronauts are spacewalking again to upgrade the space station’s power system

by @lorengrush Jan 13, 2017, 6:30am EST

It’s time for round two of NASA’s project to upgrade the International Space Station’s power system. NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency will step outside the orbiting lab this morning and install new...

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Scientists pinpoint the exact age of the Moon — and it’s older than we thought

by @lorengrush Jan 11, 2017, 3:11pm EST

It’s thanks to some precious Apollo 14 samples

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A telescope in Chile will get an upgrade so it can look for planets around Alpha Centauri

by @lorengrush Jan 10, 2017, 9:12am EST

The European Southern Observatory — an international research organization that champions ground-based astronomy — plans to turn one of its giant telescopes into an even more superior planet hunter. Specifically, the organization’s Very Large...

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SpaceX’s return to spaceflight pushed back to January 14th

by @lorengrush Jan 8, 2017, 11:44am EST

SpaceX’s first rocket launch since August has been pushed back to January 14th, due to rain and heavy winds that are expected near the launch site in California over the next week. Prior to the delay, SpaceX had been aiming to launch on January...

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Watch two astronauts swap out batteries on the outside of the space station today

by @lorengrush Jan 6, 2017, 6:00am EST

This morning, NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough will take a stroll outside of the International Space Station to help upgrade the orbiting lab’s power systems. Specifically, the duo are going to help swap out the old...

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In the 2020s NASA will launch spacecraft to study Jupiter's asteroids, and another made of metal

by @lorengrush Jan 4, 2017, 3:40pm EST

In the early 2020s, two separate NASA missions will launch to asteroids in the Solar System, to learn more about what our cosmic neighborhood was like when it was young. NASA announced today that it had selected two missions, called Lucy and P...

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Astronomers have found the source of a deep space radio wave burst for the first time

by @lorengrush Jan 4, 2017, 1:00pm EST

After a decade of bewilderment, astronomers have pinpointed the source of a mysterious blast of radio waves coming from deep outside the Milky Way: a dwarf galaxy located 3 billion light years from Earth. It’s a remarkable first in the study of...

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NASA plans to resume testing of the James Webb Telescope this month following weird readings

by @lorengrush Jan 3, 2017, 2:15pm EST

NASA plans to resume preflight tests on the James Webb Space Telescope soon, after the spacecraft had a small hiccup during a test at the end of last year. The telescope had an “unexpected response” to a vibrational test in December, prompting...

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SpaceX eyes January 8th return to flight after finishing up accident investigation

by @lorengrush Jan 2, 2017, 9:01am EST

SpaceX is aiming to return to flight on January 8th, as the company has officially determined what caused one of its Falcon 9 rockets to explode on a Florida launch pad this past September. In an online update this morning, SpaceX detailed the...

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What makes a planet a planet?

by @lorengrush Dec 30, 2016, 10:56am EST

Last year, the debate over Pluto’s planet status temporarily resurfaced when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by the tiny world at the edge of the Solar System. Once considered the ninth planet, Pluto was famously demoted a decade ago to a...

How can humans clean up our space junk?

by Jesse Emspak Dec 30, 2016, 9:00am EST

Humans filled waterways, landfills, and streets with trash, so it’s no surprise the same thing happened in Earth’s orbital neighborhood. Now our species will finally take a crack at cleaning up. Some missions focus on dead satellites, aiming to...

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Watch astronauts win the Mannequin Challenge on the International Space Station

by Rachel Becker Dec 29, 2016, 8:32pm EST

As 2016 comes to a close, it’s only fair that one of the year’s better memes gets a last hurrah. The Mannequin Challenge had school kids, athletes, and presidential candidates posing like mannequins for the camera — and now it’s in space. Thomas...

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Vera Rubin, who confirmed dark matter, has died at 88

by @mslopatto Dec 27, 2016, 11:34am EST

Astronomers believe more than 90 percent of the matter in the universe is stuff we can’t see — dark matter. The woman we have to thank for this discovery died yesterday at the age of 88. Her name was Vera Rubin. Why didn’t Rubin win the Nobel...

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The technologies NORAD is ‘using’ to track Santa Claus today

by @lorengrush Dec 24, 2016, 2:00pm EST

As a child, NORAD’s Santa Tracker served as irrefutable evidence that my belief in Santa Claus was completely justified. If the military was tracking Ol’ Saint Nick, then clearly he must be zooming through the sky at near the speed of light on...

2016: the year in space

by @lorengrush Dec 22, 2016, 9:00am EST

The year 2016 was a dynamic time for spaceflight and space science, marked by major technological achievements in rocketry and scientific discoveries that will completely alter our understanding of the Universe for decades to come. Scientists...

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Watch Elon Musk go through a roller coaster ride of emotions as he watches his rocket land

by @lorengrush Dec 20, 2016, 2:11pm EST

Fans of SpaceX are intimately familiar with the company’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing at Cape Canaveral, Florida a year ago, since SpaceX released numerous images and video showcasing the event in amazing detail. But one thing that we didn’t get...

Two Google Lunar X Prize teams are going to share a ride to the Moon next year

by @lorengrush Dec 20, 2016, 11:44am EST

The two teams will use the same PSLV rocket

Watch ULA launch its final Atlas V rocket of 2016

by @lorengrush Dec 18, 2016, 10:00am EST

Takeoff is scheduled for 1:27PM ET

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This psychedelic NASA video shows how CO2 spreads in the atmosphere

by @ale_potenza Dec 16, 2016, 5:51pm EST

NASA used satellite measurements of carbon dioxide to create a startling new 3D video that shows how the greenhouse gas moves through Earth’s atmosphere. In a little over a minute, you can see CO2 concentrations swirling around, up into the sky,...

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Newly formed star observed farting for the first time

by @ale_potenza Dec 15, 2016, 12:14pm EST

For the first time, scientists have observed the powerful whirlwinds shooting out of a newly formed star located about 450 light years away. The space outbursts occurred in the early stages of a new solar system's formation, when young stars are...

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NASA prepares (yet again) to launch weather satellites from the belly of a plane

by @lorengrush Dec 15, 2016, 6:00am EST

NASA's CYGNSS mission, an initiative to send eight small satellites into space on a Pegasus XL rocket, is slated for another takeoff this morning. The launch was originally set for Monday but was scrubbed because of a faulty hydraulic pump, with a...

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NASA’s Curiosity rover finds more evidence that Mars was once habitable

by @lorengrush Dec 14, 2016, 11:56am EST

As NASA’s Curiosity rover makes its way up a layered mountain on Mars, the little bot is finding even more signs that the Red Planet was once a habitable place — potentially capable of hosting microbial life billions of years ago. The rover has...

SpaceX officially delays first crewed flight of its Dragon capsule for NASA

by @lorengrush Dec 12, 2016, 7:14pm EST

In the wake of its September 1st rocket explosion, SpaceX has officially delayed the first crewed flight of its Crew Dragon vehicle — the capsule that the company is building to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. O...

Brightest ‘supernova’ ever found may actually be a black hole gobbling up a star

by @lorengrush Dec 12, 2016, 5:38pm EST

In 2015, a group of astronomers spotted one of the brightest and most powerful supernovae ever discovered — a star explosion so luminous that it was poised to reshape our understanding of stellar eruptions. But now, astronomers have taken a closer...

Elon Musk will attend Trump’s meeting with tech leaders

by @jlgolson Dec 12, 2016, 1:48pm EST

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will attend a meeting between tech leaders and President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday at Trump Tower in New York, The Verge has learned. Recode previously reported that Musk was considering skipping the event due...

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Facebook will begin testing live 360-degree video with Martian cosplayers

by @CaseyNewton Dec 12, 2016, 1:00pm EST

Facebook is introducing 360-degree video into its live broadcasting product, starting tomorrow with a broadcast from National Geographic from the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. At 3PM ET tomorrow, eight scientists will emerge from 80 days...