Tag Archives | space.com

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, in front of VSS Unity, one of the company’s SpaceShipTwo vehicles. LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson most likely won’t be going to space in the next six months, despite his recent statement that he’d be “very disappointed” otherwise.  Mike Moses, president of Virgin Galactic, said yesterday […]

A small asteroid buzzed Earth early Thursday (Oct. 12) in a close flyby that scientists had been looking forward to for months. The space rock, known as 2012 TC4 , zoomed about 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers) above Antarctica at 1:42 a.m. EDT (0542 GMT) Thursday. That’s about 11 percent the distance between Earth and the […]

A possible “Planet Nine” in Earth’s solar system would orbit far beyond Neptune’s orbit (visible as a bright ring around the sun in this artist’s illustration). Planet Nine is out there, and astronomers are determined to find it, according to a new statement from NASA. In fact, mounting evidence suggests it’s hard to imagine our […]

An artist’s illustration of the European Sentinel-5P satellite built to track global air-pollution levels from space. A European satellite built to map Earth’s air like never before will launch into space early Friday (Oct. 13), and you can watch it live online.  The Sentinel-5P satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) is scheduled to lift […]

The Soyuz rocket carrying the uncrewed Progress 68 cargo ship is seen just one minute before Russia’s Roscosmos space agency aborted a launch attempt from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 12, 2017. One of two umbilical towers (left) had already retracted as planned. The Russian space agency Roscosmos aborted the launch of its fastest […]

Blue Origin has so far signed up only commercial customers for its New Glenn rocket, but the company’s new CEO said initial talks are underway about certifying it for U.S. government missions. CHANTILLY, Va. — The new chief executive of Blue Origin told the National Space Council his company is in discussions about certifying its New […]

For every ton of carbon dioxide emitted by a power plant’s smokestack or a car’s exhaust pipe, some portion will stay in the Earth’s atmosphere, raising global temperatures, while the rest is absorbed by the oceans or ecosystems on land. But which parts of the ocean or biosphere act as net sources of carbon dioxide […]

The Allen Telescope Array used by the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to seek out signals from intelligent aliens. The search for extraterrestrials has gone on long before the SETI Institute was founded in 1984. Sixty years prior, on August 21st, 1924, American officials promoted a national day of radio silence, urging citizens to […]

Multiple fires in California produce plumes of smoke that are visible to satellites. Credit: CIRA Plumes of dense, gray smoke rise from deadly wildfires burning across multiple locations in California, in a striking animation of satellite images shared online Tuesday (Oct. 10) by the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). CIRA, a research […]

In 2013’s “Pacific Rim,” director Guillermo del Toro introduced audiences to world filled with high-tech Jaeger mechs the size of skyscrapers built by humanity to defend itself against giant monsters from an otherworldly realm. And if the first full trailer for the film’s sequel is any sign, those Jaegers are now going to ride rockets.  […]

This view of a portion of the Eridania region of Mars shows blocks of deep-basin deposits that have been surrounded and partially buried by younger volcanic deposits. Ancient Mars may have harbored deep-sea hydrothermal vents, the same type of environment where many scientists think life on Earth got its start, a recent study suggests.  Observations […]

These images from the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter show the appearance of a bright aurora on Mars during a solar storm in September 2017. The purple-white colors show the intensity of ultraviolet light on Mars’ night side before (left) and during (right) the event. A strong solar storm recently sparked a […]

An asteroid the size of a house is set to give Earth a close shave , and you can watch part of the space rock’s approach live online this evening (Oct. 11). The astronomy broadcasting service Slooh will air a webcast at 8 p.m. EDT tonight (0000 GMT on Oct. 12) focused on the space rock […]