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Artificial satellites serve a wide range of purposes for humanity, including national defense, communications and scientific inquiry. But artist Trevor Paglen and the Nevada Museum of Art want to launch a satellite with a completely new purpose: to be a work of art.  The Orbital Reflector project will place a 100-foot-long (30 meters) inflatable, diamond-shaped […]

Boeing now plans an uncrewed CST-100 test flight in the third quarter of 2018, with a crewed flight in the fourth quarter or, possibly, early 2019. ADELAIDE, Australia — Boeing says it is making good progress on the development of its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle, but acknowledged the first crewed test flight of the […]

“Planet Hunters,” by Lucas Ellerbroek, starts with a story of the author’s grandfather building a computer from scratch, and proceeds to share the innovations that led to the field of exoplanetary studies. Lucas Ellerbroek’s new book, “Planet Hunters” (Reaktion Books, 2017), traces the history of exoplanet discovery back to a time when the idea of […]

NASA’s EPIC camera on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite snapped this view of the total solar eclipse crossing (the very round) Earth on Aug. 21, 2017. B.o.B may be about to blow the lid off the “round-Earth conspiracy.” Unlike the rest of us, the Atlanta-based rapper has not been “tricked” into believing our planet is spherical by […]

Astronomer Giovanni Cassini is associated with a number of scientific discoveries and projects, including the first observations of Saturn’s moons. For this reason, the Cassini spacecraft that launched in 1997 and plunged into the planet in 2017 was named after him.. Born on June 8, 1625, in Perinaldo, Republic of Genoa (now Italy), he was […]

Skywatcher and photographer David Paleino snapped this view of the total lunar eclipse of June 15, 2011 from Italy using a Fujifilm FinePix S2000HD camera. Lunar eclipses occur when Earth’s shadow blocks the sun’s light, which otherwise reflects off the moon. There are three types — total, partial and penumbral — with the most dramatic […]

Discovery of SMART-1 impact site on high resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images. The field is 50 metres wide (north is up). SMART-1 touched down from north to south at a grazing speed of 2 kilometres per second. This image, with west illumination, clearly shows a linear gouge of 15 metres length in the surface. The […]

Pluto’s surface hosts blades of ice that soar to the height of skyscrapers — and researchers have narrowed down exactly how the dramatic features form. According to new research, the blades are made mostly of methane ice, and form similarly to (much shorter) spikes of snow and ice on Earth. When the New Horizons spacecraft […]

Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory houses the second-largest radio telescope in the world. Nearly a week after Hurricane Maria pulverized Puerto Rico, staff members at the island’s Arecibo Observatory are remaining optimistic as they continue to survey the damage to their enormous radio telescope.  The Arecibo Observatory contains the second-largest radio telescope in the world, and […]

A vintage test model of the Sputnik-1 satellite sold for $847,000 on Sept. 27, 2017 at Bonhams’ sale in New York City. A full-scale, vintage test model of the world’s first artificial satellite sold for more than three-quarters of a million dollars on Wednesday (Sept. 27), one week before the 60th anniversary of the launch […]

Continuing its monthlong 25th anniversary celebration, the Syfy TV network has produced three exclusive animated clips in which renowned science-fiction stars explain how they got involved with the genre. In the first clip, Neil Gaiman — the science-fiction writer who brought us “Stardust” and “American Gods” — tells the story of how bottled milk and […]

A set of stunning images available for download shows what it’s like to ride up close and personal to a comet.  Some 210 images that the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe took of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken between July 2014 and September 2016, are on the agency’s “Space in Images” site. Users can download the whole […]

An astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) has shared some stunning footage of the Aurora Australis, otherwise known as the southern lights. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured this beautiful aurora display  as the ISS passed over the Southern Hemisphere. The display’s vibrant colors lit up the southern sky as the Antarctic Circle was just […]