Science

The state of a three-tonne discarded rocket part that should have crashed into the far side of the Moon by now is not known, say astronomers. Scientists had expected the rocket part to hit the lunar surface on Friday at a speed exceeding 8,800kmph, dig out a small crater, and create a plume of smoke.

British satellite company OneWeb said on Thursday it was suspending all launches from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after Moscow’s space agency demanded guarantees that its technology would not be used for military purposes. The British government, which owns a stake in OneWeb, said it supported the decision. “In light of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked

The Sun is a mysterious place. Its atmosphere gets much hotter the farther one goes from the Sun’s blazing surface. In fact, the outermost part of the Sun (corona) burns at a temperature rising to one million degrees Celsius, while just 1,500 kilometres below, the surface simmers at 5,500 degrees Celsius. The biggest challenge in

SpaceX chief Elon Musk warned there was a high chance the company’s Starlink satellite broadband service could be “targeted” in Ukraine, which has been hit by Russian invasion. The warning came days after an internet security researcher warned that devices used for satellite communications could become “beacons” that Russia could target for airstrikes. “Important warning:

NASA is offering space enthusiasts a chance to fly their names around the Moon. The US space agency has set up a website where you can add your name on a flash drive that will travel aboard Artemis I, an unmanned mission to orbit the Moon and test the Space Launch System (SLS). Artemis I

There was a lot of excitement when astronomers from the Chile-based European Southern Observatory (ESO) claimed to have discovered the closest black hole to Earth, just 1,000 light-years away, in the HR 6819 system. But others had disputed the findings. Now, it appears those who doubted the findings were correct. Research by an international team

NASA has granted three more missions — Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 — to SpaceX as part of its Commercial Human Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract for crew transportation services to the International Space Station (ISS). This takes the space agency’s total number of crewed missions to the ISS to nine, including the three successful operational trips

Iran likely suffered another failed launch of a satellite-carrying rocket in recent days attempting to reinvigorate a program criticized by the West, even as Tehran faces last-minute negotiations with world powers to save its tattered nuclear deal in Vienna. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies seen by The Associated Press show scorch marks at a launch

A Russian-European mission to land a rover on Mars is “very unlikely” to launch this year due to sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Space Agency said. The launch of the Rosalind Franklin rover, whose mission is to drill into Martian soil to seek out signs of life, was originally planned for 2020

An Atlas V rocket blasted off from Florida on Tuesday carrying to orbit the next big satellite designed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide round-the-clock tracking of weather, wildfires and climate change over Earth’s western hemisphere. The GOES-T spacecraft is the third in the latest series of advanced geostationary satellites, credited

There is a renewed interest in solar science as many space agencies around the world are studying the Sun to unearth the mysteries of its evolution. The US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Inouye Solar Telescope is helping astronomers in this effort. The world’s largest telescope recently began its first science observations and NSF shared on

Elon Musk has said his company SpaceX would save the International Space Station (ISS) from crashing after the head of the Russian space agency warned that the crippling sanctions announced by the West against Moscow could lead to the ISS falling into the US, Europe, or India. In a Twitter thread, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stellar image of two interacting galaxies some 200 million light-years away from Earth. The pair is located in the Pegasus constellation, named after a winged horse from Greek mythology. The image shared by NASA on its Instagram page shows a large spiral galaxy (NGC 7469), and its diminutive

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has again completed a close flyby of the Sun in a bid to understand how our neighbouring star works. It was Parker’s 11th close approach to the Sun and it came within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometres) of the nearly perfect ball of hot plasma. In comparison, the distance was

Russia’s space agency chief has warned the US that the slew of sanctions imposed on Moscow can “destroy our cooperation” on the International Space Station (ISS) and asked Washington if it wants to threaten India and China with the “possibility of a 500-tonne structure falling” on them. Russia and the US are the major partners

Scientists are almost halfway through the process of aligning the 18 hexagonal mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful observatory ever sent to space. NASA has said that the scientists have completed the second and third out of the total seven phases of mirror alignment. With the completion of these

Astronomers have long observed Saturn and its rings using telescopes that have been placed on Earth and in space. The mysterious planet has always excited scientists. But how does the Earth look from Saturn’s perspective? NASA has shared an image of the second-largest planet and some of its rings that also showed how our Earth

Artemis I, NASA’s uncrewed mission that will set the stage for returning humans to the Moon after several decades, is unlikely to be launched before summer this year. The rundown to the actual launch of the ambitious mission has been changed several times so far as the team behind it was not ready with all

Even though the Russian military action in Ukraine has heightened tensions between Moscow and the US, the two sides will continue to cooperate on operations of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said. The US space agency has said that its collaborative operations with the Russian space agency Roscosmos will continue as normal. Russia and

A Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS), a payload on-board Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, has detected solar proton events which significantly increase the radiation exposure to humans in space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said. The instrument on January 18 also recorded coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a powerful stream of ionised material and magnetic fields,