Space

Satellites could have a longer life and space become a bit tidier if Starfish Space's Otter Pup 2 mission pans out. Scheduled to launch later this year, it aims to demonstrate how a small craft can dock with unprepared satellites for service or disposal.

It was race against time as NASA engineers recently raced to fix a thruster problem aboard the vintage Voyager 1 deep space probe. It's hard enough to repair a craft at the edge of the solar system, but this time they faced a potentially deadly deadline.

A potentially destructive Soviet Venus lander that was lost in space for over half a century has reentered the Earth's atmosphere. Tracked by various space agencies and individuals, the capsule crashed on May 10 somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Given the fact that satellites orbit amongst one another at thousands of miles per hour, it's important to know exactly how fast they're going. A new device offers an improved way of doing so, and it's appropriately named the Spacecraft Speedometer.

The release of NASA's latest budget reveals the Orion spacecraft and Lunar Gateway space station are getting the chop. The US$18.8-billion total figure decreases spending by $6 billion, or 24%, as the space agency increases funding for crewed Moon and Mars missions.

The Space Age past may come knocking on the world's door next week as the defunct Soviet Union's Kosmos 482 Venus lander from 1972 makes an unwelcome return home and is predicted to crash into the Earth's atmosphere around May 10.

It seems too good to be true, but UK-based Pulsar Fusion has revealed its new Sunbird self-contained nuclear rocket tug that uses a fusion propulsion engine that could reduce a trip to Mars to under four months and Pluto to under four years.

Northrop Grumman has written a new line in the history books, the company's Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV-1) executing the first undocking of two commercial satellites in geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) – heralding a new age of commercial space operations.

We've deployed so many satellites into space over the last few decades that we now have a massive orbital junk problem. The European Space Agency says there's now roughly as much debris as there are active satellites floating about in Low Earth Orbit.

If you've ever looked into the living conditions of astronauts in space, you probably know they make do with spartan arrangements, including mostly rehydratable meals. Fermentation could help with making a wider variety of flavorful foods available.

If you've been wondering how long the day on Uranus is, you probably need to get out more. But if you have, you'll be interested to know that observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that it's 28 seconds longer than previously thought.

Looking for life on Saturn's largest moon Titan may be trickier than first thought. New computer simulations suggest that if life exists, there may not be a lot of it about. In fact, the mass probably wouldn't amount to much of anything at all.

Amazon is launching 27 satellites into Low Earth Orbit next week, kicking off its years-in-the-making plan to set up a massive constellation and deliver internet access anywhere on the globe – similar to SpaceX's Starlink service.

NASA has successfully tested an electric force field on the Moon that protects spacecraft from destructive lunar dust. The Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) was carried aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, whose mission ended on March 16.

One of the most studied space rocks of all time has surprised us again, with the "mudball meteorite" Aguas Zarcas having cruised around the solar system for two million years without as much as a scratch. It defies the "fragile" class it belongs to.