Tag Archives | space.com

The NOAA/NASA Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite captured this view of Earth from nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away in July 2015. Exoplanet hunters can determine a remarkable amount of information about distant worlds by studying the planet’s orbital parameters, and also by looking at the planet’s host star. Now scientists from the […]

Sonequa Martin-Green stars in the new TV series “Star Trek: Discovery,” which premieres Sept. 24, 2017. Starting tonight (Sept. 24), a new “Star Trek” TV series will boldly take viewers farther into the Starfleet universe.  The first episode of “Star Trek: Discovery ” airs tonight on CBS at 8:30 p.m. EDT/7:30 p.m. CDT. Immediately after […]

Former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, a “Star Trek” fan, floats with a Russian spacesuit on the International Space Station during his Expedition 10 mission in 2005. Leroy Chiao is the CEO and co-founder of OneOrbit LLC, a motivational, training and education company. He served as a NASA astronaut from 1990-2005 and flew four missions into […]

The United States has another eye in the sky. The NROL-42 spy satellite lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning (Sept. 24) at 1:49 a.m. EDT (0549 GMT; 10:49 p.m. Sept. 23 local California time), streaking skyward atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. NROL-42 is the latest addition to the […]

Old doomsday predictions never die. They just get recycled. Just six years after radio preacher Harold Camping promised the apocalypse, and five years after the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to extinguish life on Earth as we know it, new doomsday predictions have arrived. This time, they come via YouTube and a man […]

Artist’s illustration of Deep Space Industries’ Harvestor-class spacecraft for asteroid mining. The idea of mining asteroids for precious mineral deposits has gained steam in recent years, with space mining startups focusing on logistics and governments like Luxembourg positioning themselves as big funders of the sector. But before we go asteroid mining, we need to figure […]

“Star Trek” is, at its roots, an exploratory series. Whether the crew is exploring a sector by choice, or stranded due to unfortunate accident (ahem, “Voyager”), their primary focus when tooling around the universe is looking for new things and cataloging them. As a whole, although there are exceptions, crews are respectful when meeting with […]

LOS ANGELES — Who was the better “Star Trek” captain: Jean-Luc Picard or James T. Kirk? Or were they both beat by Kathryn Janeway? Space.com posed this classic Trek question to some of the stars and creators of the newest Trek TV series, “Star Trek: Discovery ,” at the show’s premiere here Tuesday (Sept. 19). […]

Actor Sean Penn, seen here at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, will star in “The First,” a 2018 Hulu series billed as a space drama about the first human mission to Mars. Move over, Matt Damon – it’s time for a new name-brand Hollywood actor to take the stage during a fictional mission to Mars. […]

A wide view of Pluto taken by the New Horizons space probe in July 2015. Pluto, once considered the ninth and most distant planet from the sun, is now the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It is also one of the largest known members of the Kuiper Belt , a shadowy zone […]

After sunset on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, look low in the western sky for Jupiter sitting about 6 degrees to the left of the young crescent moon. While residents of the northern half of the Earth prepare for shorter days and colder weather — the first day of fall is today (Sept. 22) — there […]

3 Diamonds, three nanosatellites made by the UK-based startup Sky and Space Global, have successfully connected a smartphone call from space. For the first time, a voice call has been made via a nanosatellite using a regular smartphone.  The voice call lasted more than a minute and went off without a hitch, said Meir Moalem, […]

Crewmembers on the International Space Station celebrate “Aloha Friday.” From left to right: Joe Acaba, Alexander Misurkin, Mark Vande Hei, Cmdr. Randy Bresnik, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Paolo Nespoli. Today (Sept. 22) is the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere, but the astronauts on the International Space Station  squeezed in one last “Aloha Friday.” […]