Space

NASA sought on Oct. 3, to tamp down speculation that sabotage caused a tiny hole found in September in the side of a Russian module docked at the International Space Station, but the mystery remained unsolved. NASA stressed in a brief statement issued from its Washington headquarters that Dimitri Rogozin, general director of the Russian […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) released a new image of what it is like to stand on a comet, shot via the Rosetta spacecraft. The picture was taken in 2014 before Rosetta spacecraft landed on the comet, which is known as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta ended its mission on Sept. 30, 2016, crash-landing on the comet. […]

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is swinging by Venus on its unprecedented journey to the sun. Launched in August, the spacecraft gets a gravity assist as it passes within 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) of Venus. The flyby is the first of seven that will draw Parker ever closer to the sun. By the end of October, Parker will […]

TOKYO—An unmanned Japanese space capsule is headed to the International Space Station filled with cargo including food, experiments and new batteries. The craft was launched on Sept. 23th at 2:52 a.m. from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. It will take 4 ½ days to reach the space station. The launch was delayed for […]

ORLANDO—A planet-hunting orbital telescope designed to detect worlds beyond our solar system discovered two distant planets this week five months after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, officials said on Sept. 20. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, better known as TESS, made an early discovery of “super-Earth” and “hot Earth” planets in solar systems at […]

LOS ANGELES—Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said Sept. 17 that he plans to blast off on the first-ever private commercial trip around the moon and will invite six to eight artists, architects, designers and other creative people on the weeklong journey “to inspire the dreamer in all of us.” The SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket is scheduled […]

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA— SpaceX said it has signed the first private moon traveler, with some changes to its original game plan. The big reveal on who it is—and when the flight to the moon will be—will be announced at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California on Sept. 17. It’s not the same mission SpaceX founder […]

SALT LAKE CITY—A strange thing happened after Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew returned from the moon with lunar rocks: Many of the mementos given to every U.S. state vanished. Now, after years of sleuthing, a former NASA investigator is closing in on his goal of locating the whereabouts of all 50. In recent […]

Hurricane Florence was captured by NASA via the International Space Station, providing a “stark and sobering view” of the Category 4 storm predicted to make landfall in the Southeastern United States. The footage, according to the space agency, was captured at 7:50 a.m. ET on Sept. 12. NASA’s “Suomi NPP satellite passed over the eye […]

NASA has released a “selfie” from Mars of its Curiosity rover. The 360 degree panoramic image is made from photos taken from a camera on the rover’s mast on Aug. 9. The photo shows the rover at Vera Rubin Ridge. Curiosity had just drilled for a rock sample. The photo shows a thin layer of […]

Amazon.com is in talks with Chile to house and mine massive amounts of data generated by the country’s giant telescopes, which could prove fertile ground for the company to develop new artificial intelligence tools. The talks, which have been little reported on so far and which were described to Reuters by Chilean officials and an astronomer, […]

NASA said a “potentially hazardous asteroid” is on a “close approach” near Earth, but the space agency said there is nothing to be afraid of as the asteroid is heading past the planet at approximately 3 million miles away, Fox News reported. Known as asteroid 2016 NF23, the object is between 230 and 525 feet […]

If you know nothing about what’s happening kilometers above the clouds, maybe you should. While investors prefer sectors with nearer-term benefits, space is an area Morgan Stanley anticipates will see “significant development.” Several recent events support the potential to transition investments in the global space economy from what is mostly the private equity domain to […]

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has a vision for renewed and “sustainable” human exploration of the moon, and he cites the existence of water on the lunar surface as a key to chances for success. “We know that there’s hundreds of billions of tons of water ice on the surface of the moon,” Bridenstine said in […]

SEATTLE—The space company of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen on Aug. 20 unveiled details of medium-lift rockets and a reusable space cargo plane it is developing, injecting more competition into the lucrative launch services market. With its rockets, Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems Corp is trying to cash in on higher demand in the coming years for […]

Scientists have confirmed the existence of ice on the surface of the moon. The findings have important significance for humankind’s future space explorations. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on Aug. 20. The study’s lead author, Dr. Shuai Li, a planetary […]

It’s starting to feel real. Boeing Co. and Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. have contracts with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station as part of what’s known as the Commercial Crew Program. Seven years after the end of the space shuttle program, NASA introduced the astronauts who will fly with both […]

NASA astronauts who will be riding the SpaceX Dragon discussed the challenges they’ve faced and what they’re looking forward to while speaking at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California on Aug. 13 ahead of the Crew Dragon mission. NASA last week assigned the astronauts who will ride the first commercial capsules into orbit next year […]

NASA successfully launched a spacecraft toward the sun on Aug. 12, hoping to increase scientific understanding of how our star works. The Parker Solar Probe’s departure promises to set a plethora of records, including speediest spacecraft, highest velocity while leaving Earth and closest solar approach. It will also mark the first robotic visit to a […]

NASA launched a space probe early Sunday that will go closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before, the agency announced. The craft will endure extreme heat while zooming through the solar corona to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere that gives rise to the solar winds. The Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft the size of […]