Today, an Israeli lander named after the Hebrew word for “Genesis” attempted to mark a new beginning for space exploration by becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to touch down on the moon. Built by the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL, the Beresheet lander tried to softly land within Mare Serenitatis, a vast volcanic basin on the…
After decades of conjecture and simulations, an international consortium of scientists released the first ever photos of a black hole on Wednesday. The never-before seen black hole is in a galaxy far, far away, called Messier 87 (M87). It’s at about the center of that galaxy, and about 53 million light years from Earth. It’s…
NASA has just been given a huge challenge. US vice president Mike Pence announced that president Donald Trump will direct the space agency to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. “The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts launched by American rockets from American soil,” he said…
NASA has cancelled its planned all-women spacewalk at the International Space Station this week over limited spacesuit sizes for participating astronauts. The spacewalk, announced earlier this month, was set to mark a historic moment as the first-ever spacewalk conducted only by women. In a statement released on Monday, NASA said its decision was made due…
One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA’s Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars. The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers…
ArianeGroup said on Monday it has signed a one-year contract with the European Space agency to study the possibility of preparing a mission, with the aim of mining regolith. The company says “regolith is an ore from which it is possible to extract water and oxygen, thus enabling an independent human presence on the Moon…
In an historic first, China has successfully landed a rover on the far side of the moon, Chinese state media announced Thursday, a huge milestone for the nation as it attempts to position itself as a leading space power. Official confirmation of the landing came two hours later via state broadcaster CCTV, which said the…
The latest test flight by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully rocketed to the edge of space and back. The firm’s SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship reached a height of 82.7km, beyond the altitude at which US agencies have awarded astronaut wings. On Thursday, the SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket ship took off from the Mojave Desert in…
For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun. Comparing data from different instruments aboard the trailblazing spacecraft, mission scientists determined the probe crossed the outer…
Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage suffered a landing anomaly, failing to land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Instead, the Falcon 9 first stage made a water landing in the Atlantic Ocean. Hans Koenigsmann. SpaceX Vice President of Mission Assurance, explains the anomaly.
Mars has just received its newest robotic resident. NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander successfully touched down on the Red Planet after an almost seven-month, 300-million-mile (458-million-kilometer) journey from Earth. InSight’s two-year mission will be to study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with…
NASA has chosen Jezero Crater as the landing site for its upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission after a five year search, during which every available detail of more than 60 candidate locations on the Red Planet was scrutinized and debated by the mission team and the planetary science community. The rover mission is scheduled to…