Next month, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will carry out a daring and unprecedented maneuver – the first combined lunar-Earth flyby. This highly precise maneuver will harness the gravitational forces of the Moon and Earth in quick succession, bending Juice’s trajectory and lining it up for the next stage of its journey to Jupiter. […]

ESA’s Space Safety program has obtained permission to begin preparatory work for its next planetary defense mission – the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses). Ramses will rendezvous with the asteroid 99942 Apophis and accompany it through its exceptionally close flyby of Earth in 2029. This rare event, where an asteroid of this size […]

Booster 12, the Super Heavy booster to be used for Starship Flight 5, was rolled out from Mega Bay 1 to the Orbital Launch Site on Tuesday, July 9. It was lifted onto Pad A’s orbital launch mount by the Mechazilla “chopstick” arms that evening. Testing for Booster 12 commenced with a partial propellant load […]

Located approximately 17,000 light-years away, Omega Centauri has long been known as the brightest and largest globular cluster in the night sky. When observed in areas with low light pollution, it appears nearly as large as a full moon. Globular clusters can contain up to one million stars at the same time and are often […]

T-Tauri stars represent a fleeting yet crucial phase in the life cycle of a star. They are young stellar objects, born from the gravitational collapse of dense clouds of gas and dust within molecular clouds. At this early stage, the proto-star is still accreting material from the surrounding protoplanetary disk, fueling its growth and illuminating […]

The James Webb Space Telescope’s observations (which combine near- and mid-infrared light from Webb’s NIRCam [Near-InfraRed Camera] and MIRI [Mid-Infrared Instrument], respectively) clearly show that the interacting galaxies Arp 142, nicknamed the Penguin (NGC 2936) and the Egg (NGC 2937), are joined by a blue haze that is a mix of stars and gas, a […]

An international team of astronomers has created an enormous catalogue of the motions of stars in Omega Centauri, measuring the velocities for 1.4 million stars by studying over 500 images from the Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades. Most of these observations were intended for instrument calibration rather than scientific use, but they turned out […]

In the weeks leading up to launch, the Ariane 6 rocket underwent rigorous testing and preparations at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Engineers meticulously checked every system, ensuring the vehicle was ready for its maiden voyage into space. The launch campaign culminated in the final countdown, as the powerful rocket was raised to the vertical […]

Ariane 6, Europe’s new heavy-lift rocket, marks a significant milestone in the continent’s space exploration endeavors. Conceived in the 2010s, this powerful launch vehicle is designed to replace the retired Ariane 5 rocket, halving the launch costs over time while offering the potential for more launches each year. The configuration for Ariane 6’s maiden flight […]

As many as four SpaceX Falcon 9 missions are on the roster for this week’s launch schedule. The four missions will be split evenly between Starlink and two payloads for other customers. At least one of the SpaceX missions is likely to be affected by the severe weather currently being experienced on the east coast […]