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China’s Shenzhou 13 astronauts ventured outside the orbiting Tianhe module on Sunday and installed a new panoramic camera for monitoring the space station. Rookie astronaut Ye Guangfu opened the hatch of the Tianhe airlock on Dec. 26 at 5:44 a.m. EST (1044 GMT, 6:44 p.m. Beijing time) and reported feeling well shortly after exiting. He … Read more
NASA’s massive new space observatory has entered its most perilous phase yet as it begins the careful process of unfurling its delicate sunshield. The James Webb Space Telescope launched on Sunday (Dec. 25) and will be a revolutionary new observatory focused on studying the universe in infrared light. But first, it has to survive a … Read more
The astronauts launching with the first private crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) next year have cleared all their medical evaluations. NASA and its international partners approved the four-person crew for Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), which is scheduled to launch on Feb. 28, 2022. The Ax-1 crew includes Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark … Read more
A summary of decades of research on a rather ‘out-there’ idea involving viruses from space raises questions on just how scientific we can be when it comes to speculating on the history of life on Earth. It’s easy to throw around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing the scientific fringe, but then … Read more
SpaceX is just months away from its 20th anniversary of founding in 2002 and it’s headed into a new year in a stronger position than ever. In 2021, the California-based company built its strength in fields ranging from broadband communications to human launches. The steady push by SpaceX into space exploration and eventual Mars landings … Read more
NASA’s next-generation space observatory has sailed beyond the orbit of the moon after nailing the second of three required course-correction burns, agency officials said Monday. The long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope launched on Saturday (Dec. 25), beginning a one-month deployment process. Over the course of that deployment, the observatory must execute three burns to adjust … Read more
NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope successfully deployed a critical antenna Sunday (Dec. 26) just one day after its Christmas launch into space. The space telescope unfolded what scientists call a gimbaled antenna assembly that carries the high-rate data dish responsible for beaming Webb’s observations of the early universe back to Earth. Webb launched into … Read more
This year saw more space tourists fly to space on a bunch of different systems, and the story has only just begun. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX each flew their first tourist-focused missions this year, sending aloft several people each with minimal training in professional spaceflight. Meanwhile, Roscosmos (the Russian federal space agency) brought … Read more
Every year, Hubble takes a little time to turn its electronic eyes closer to home. Rather than staring into vast distances across space and time, it focuses on our very own Solar System; specifically, the heavyweight planets that lurk out past the asteroid belt – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. That’s not because they’re … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope is truly on its way. The massive observatory launched today (Dec. 25) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). Just 12.5 hours later, the spacecraft began a vital maneuver on its month-long journey to its future outpost as the observatory executed a 65-minute-long thruster … Read more