CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX will launch its next big batch of Starlink satellites into orbit for the company’s growing megaconstellation today (Sept. 28), and you can watch the action live online. The Hawthorne, California-based company will loft 60 Starlink internet satellites on its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’sContinue Reading
SpaceX postponed the launch of a new fleet of Starlink internet satellites today (Sept. 28) due to bad weather at the mission’s Florida launch site. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch 60 Starlink satellites from Pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:22 a.m.Continue Reading
The Milky Way’s core harbors two giants: the galaxy’s largest black hole and a cluster of tens of millions of stars around the black hole that is denser and more massive than any other star cluster in the galaxy. Most of the cluster’s many stars shine within just 20 light-yearsContinue Reading
Unusual flashes of gamma rays could reveal that what appear to be giant black holes are actually huge wormholes, a new study finds. Wormholes are tunnels in space-time that can theoretically allow travel anywhere in space and time, or even into another universe. Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests wormholesContinue Reading
Radiation exposure from two months on the moon is equivalent to roughly five months on the ISS A two-month stint on the moon would expose astronauts to roughly the same amount of radiation as they would get living on the International Space Station for five months, according to new measurementsContinue Reading
SpaceX just popped another Starship test tank. The Starship SN7.1 tank was destroyed on purpose Tuesday night (Sept. 22) at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, during a pressure test designed to take the stainless-steel hardware to its bursting point. SpaceX has performed several other such tests, including one this past JuneContinue Reading
Famous for the first-ever image of a black hole, M87* is now revealing how it changes over time Astrophysicists have gotten their first direct view of a supermassive black hole’s appearance changing over time. The black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years away fromContinue Reading
Solar wind electrons smash water molecules to make the comet’s version of the northern lights Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own version of the northern lights. Observations taken by the Rosetta spacecraft reveal the comet’s aurora, which — unlike Earth’s eye-catching light shows — shimmers in invisible ultraviolet light, researchers reportContinue Reading
A new approach to space housekeeping sends charged dust particles flying The NASA Artemis missions aim to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. But to succeed, they’ll need to solve big problems caused by some tiny particles: dust. Impacts on the moon’s surface have crushed lunar rock into dustContinue Reading
An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of a rare molecule — phosphine — in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer aContinue Reading