The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Our sun is the best-observed star in the entire universe. We see its light every day. For centuries, scientists have tracked the dark spots dappling its radiant face, while in recent decades, telescopes in space and on Earth have scrutinized …
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Three rapid bursts of charged particles that erupted toward Earth from the sun’s burning-hot outer atmosphere on Wednesday could lead to stunning auroras across a wide swath of the US and a colorful hue as far south as Florida to start the weekend. Traveling at more than 1.5 million miles …
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It’s been a rough few years for Boeing, but now the company is about to fly closer to the sun than ever before. After nearly a decade of development and delays, the first crewed launch of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft finally has liftoff. Here’s how to follow its journey live. …
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After much waiting, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has finally launched humans into space. At 10:52 am ET on Wednesday, June 5, the vehicle lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with two NASA astronauts on board, the culmination of a troubled decade of development. Now, Boeing will hope, its own promised era of …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In October, a Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. The $5 billion mission is designed to find out if Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, can support life. But because Europa …
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Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Wednesday that would have reaffirmed a nearly 50-year-old ban on placing weapons of mass destruction into orbit, two months after reports Russia has plans to do just that. Russia's vote against the resolution was no surprise. As one of the five permanent …
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Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations. Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to …
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NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station. This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to …
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The US Space Force announced Thursday it is partnering with two companies, Rocket Lab and True Anomaly, for a first-of-its-kind mission to demonstrate how the military might counter “on-orbit aggression.” On this mission, a spacecraft built and launched by Rocket Lab will chase down another satellite made by True Anomaly, …
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Elon Musk has been talking publicly about his sweeping vision for Mars settlement for nearly eight years now, dating to a speech in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2016. This weekend, at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas, Musk once again took up the mantle of his "making life multiplanetary" cause. …
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