This composite view of the moon made from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos shows how the moon will appear on the night of Oct. 28, 2017, during International Observe the Moon Night. It’s time to celebrate the moon’s importance in astronomy. Tonight (Oct. 28), institutions worldwide will take part in International Observe the Moon Night, when […]
Artist’s illustration of China’s 8 Tiangong-1 space lab, which is expected to fall to Earth in early 2018. China’s Tiangong-1 space lab is headed for an uncontrolled and destructive nose-dive into Earth’s atmosphere early next year. Exactly when and where on Earth the multiton discarded craft will make its plunge cannot now be predicted. All […]
One of Google’s Project Loon balloons floating from Nevada to Puerto Rico. WASHINGTON — Google’s experimental high-altitude balloon project is using connectivity from O3b satellites to provide emergency communications in hurricane-ravished Puerto Rico . O3b owner SES said Oct. 23 that it is providing satellite capacity and a “rapidly deployable” O3b FastConnect terminal in order to […]
An engineering test model of the Vector-R rocket at Pad 0B of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia. ATLANTA — Vector, an Arizona-based company that has done test flights from California and Georgia, announced Oct. 19 it plans to make its first orbital launch from a Virginia site as soon as next summer. Vector […]
Fans of the long-running Solar and Heliospheric Observatory have a special treat this week: A long-time cometary favorite of the SOHO spacecraft team will make a grand return to the spacecraft’s images as it swings around the sun. The comet, called 96P/Machholz, will start its fifth run through the spacecraft’s field of view since SOHO […]
A scan of the astrolabe revealed etchings on it. More than 500 years ago, a fierce storm sank a ship carrying the earliest known marine astrolabe — a device that helped sailors navigate at sea, new research finds. Divers found the artifact in 2014, but were unsure exactly what it was at the time. Now, […]
An early sketch of DARPA’s reusable space plane design, the XS-1. While NASA is working to build a next-generation rocket and space capsule that could help send humans to Mars , another government agency is trying to build a versatile, uncrewed space plane for military applications closer to Earth. Recently, a representative from the Defense […]
A violent galaxy that shreds its neighbors and throws out their remains leaves wispy trails in the most detailed picture ever taken of the Fornax Cluster, one of the closest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way. The images come courtesy of the Very Large Telescope array at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in the […]
Juan Valderrama y Aguilar’s drawing of the solar flare he observed on Sept. 10, 1886, on a sunspot (with the darkest region in black and the less dark area shown with hashed lines). The solar flare is the tadpole-shaped feature in the drawing. The original document is currently at the Library of the Canary Islands […]
This sequence of images, taken by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) aboard Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft, shows a limb cloud coming into view on March 7, 2013. From top to bottom, the images were taken at 2248, 2249, 2251 and 2253 GMT. A webcam aboard a European Mars orbiter has snapped some striking images of […]
Orion meteors streak through the starry sky over Big Bend National Park in western Texas. This stellar self-portrait is a composite of four shots by Sergio Garcia Rill. Orionid meteors put on a dazzling show for skywatchers and astrophotographers who stayed up late (or woke up early) last weekend to watch this year’s Orionid meteor […]
Paul Weitz, seen here aboard the Skylab orbital workshop in 1973, died on Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at the age of 85. Paul Weitz, a former NASA astronaut who lived on board Skylab before commanding the maiden mission of space shuttle Challenger, died on Monday (Oct. 23). He was 85. Weitz died peacefully at his […]
The moon photobombs the sun in a lunar transit in this view from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft taken on Oct. 19, 2017. Credit: Joy Ng/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO While keeping an eye on the sun’s weather, a NASA spacecraft caught an awesome view of the moon passing across the face of the sun […]