Space

In an astonishing bit of space gymnastics, SpaceX has pulled off a true first. It captured a Super Heavy booster at about 7:31 am CT using its own launch tower after delivering a Starship second stage to orbit, followed by a controlled reentry.

High-resolution images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot have revealed that it’s not as stable as we thought. Instead, the Spot is squeezing in and out, with NASA describing it as “jiggling like a bowl of gelatin.”

Data from NASA's Curiosity rover collected on Mars is shedding new light on how the Red Planet became uninhabitable in the distant past due to a changing climate that caused the surface water to evaporate or be locked away as ice.

ESA's Hera spacecraft designed to assess NASA's experiment to deflect an asteroid has launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At 14:52 GMT, the robotic probe lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket to begin its three-year mission.

One picture taken every day of the year starting September 2023 through to September 2024 provides a pretty fascinating perspective of the twilight zone transit due to the Earth's 23.5-degree axial tilt as it orbits around the Sun.

The most abundant metal known to man is iron. It's everywhere. Not just on Earth, but in space as well. Astro engineers have just figured out how to use iron – or nearly any metal for that matter – as plasma rocket fuel.

China is planning to put people on the Moon around 2030 and is showing off the new space suits they'll be wearing. At a media event, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) had two astronauts put the suits through their paces for the cameras.

Blue Origin has conducted the first hot-fire static test of the fully integrated second stage of the company's New Glenn orbital rocket. The 15-second test took place on September 23, 2024 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

We're now one step closer to seeing tourists making balloon flights to the edge of outer space. Just last week, Florida company Space Perspective sent a balloon-lifted test capsule to the outer limits of our planet's atmosphere, followed by a successful splashdown landing.

China's Nebula-1 reusable first-stage rocket booster took a bit of a tumble on September 22, 2024 when its nearly perfect high-altitude vertical flight ended when it got a bit dented as it crashed into the ground during the powered landing attempt.

Asteroids can devastate the planet in an instant – just ask the dinosaurs. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have now demonstrated a proof of concept method to deflect a potential Earthbound asteroid using a blast of X-rays.

Astronomers have spotted an absolutely colossal cosmic chimney that stretches as far as 140 Milky Ways lined up side by side. These jumbo jets are being blasted from a supermassive black hole.

Saturn’s rings are iconic, but new evidence presented by researchers from Monash University suggests Earth might once have sported one of its own. This ring would likely have caused climate chaos on the surface.

After almost five decades sailing through space, NASA is trying to squeeze a few more years out of the venerable Voyager 1 deep space probe by swapping a wonky thruster system for a disused secondary one to keep its radio antenna pointing at the Earth.

After five days in orbit, the Polaris Dawn mission, which conducted the world's first commercial spacewalk, has returned safely to Earth. At 3:36 am EDT, the Dragon capsule Resilience splashed down off the coast of the Dry Tortugas, Florida.