'Star Trek' Actor Simon Pegg Talks Space Tech with Astronaut in Orbit
In a conversation with “Star Trek” actor and screenwriter Simon Pegg, space station astronaut Kate Rubins said she feels like she’s living in the future — and that the iconic science fiction franchise is fairly accurate in representing life in orbit. Paramount Movies uploaded the full, 25-minute video to YouTube this week as part of […]
NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins Prepares For the Journey Home
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is pictured inside of the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft while conducting routine spacesuit checks. The Expedition 49 trio of Rubins, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin are scheduled to undock their Soyuz on Saturday, Oct. 29, and land at 11:59 p.m. EDT. To source
Our Galactic Arm May Have a Longer Reach Than We Thought
An artist’s impression of the Milky Way as seen from the outside. New research suggests that the Orion Spur, or Arm, is almost twice as long as scientists had previously thought. The sun’s galactic neighborhood just became a bit more significant. New research reveals that the sun’s branch of the Milky Way may be several […]
Dead Star's Corpse Twirls in Eerie Cosmic Graveyard
The wispy tendrils of a long-dead star curl around a dense sphere of extraordinary power in this spooky view of the Crab Nebula . The star that became the Crab Nebula went supernova centuries ago, from Earth’s perspective — in 1054, it burned so brightly that skywatchers could see it shining during the day for […]
Week In Images
Our week through the lens: 24-28 October 2016 To source
NASA's Pluto Probe Beams Back Final Data from Historic Flyby
Artist’s illustration of NASA’s New Horizons Pluto probe beaming data home to Earth. New Horizons finished sending all of the data collected during its July 2015 Pluto flyby to mission control on Oct. 25, 2016. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has finally finished beaming home all of the data it gathered during its historic July 2015 […]
Swarm reveals why satellites lose track
Satellite engineers have been puzzling over why GPS navigation systems on low-orbiting satellites like ESA’s Swarm sometimes black out when they fly over the equator between Africa and South America. Thanks to Swarm, it appears ‘thunderstorms’ in the ionosphere are to blame. To source
Why Half of Pluto's 'Heart' Has a New Name
Pluto, imaged by the New Horizons probe. The heart-shaped region in the lower hemisphere was renamed recently by the mission team, from Sputnik Planum to Sputnik Planitia. The western lobe of Pluto’s famous heart has a new name. Members of NASA’s New Horizons mission team gave unofficial names to the dwarf planet’s features when the […]
Keep an automatic eye on seismic zones
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 twin radar satellites combined with cloud computing are monitoring Europe’s earthquake zones by searching for ground shifts as small as a millimetre. To source
Putorana Plateau
Earth observation image of the week: the snowy landscape of the Putorana Plateau in Siberia, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme To source
NASA Missions Harvest a Passel of ‘Pumpkin’ Stars
NASA’s Kepler and Swift missions have found rapidly rotating stars producing more than 100 times our own sun’s peak X-ray emission. Spinning so fast they resemble pumpkins, the stars likely formed by mergers of sun-like stars. original
First Pass of Echo 1 Satellite Over the Goldstone Tracking Station
This photograph shows the first pass of Echo 1, America’s first communications satellite, over the Goldstone Tracking Station managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, in the early morning of Aug. 12, 1960. The movement of the antenna, star trails, and Echo 1 (the long streak in the middle) are visible in this […]