Space

After decades of planning and building, the world's largest digital camera at the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile has snapped its first imagery – from test observations spanning a 10-hour window.

ESA has found a way to make its own solar eclipses more or less on demand and all it took was a pair of robotic spacecraft flying in a formation precise to within a millimeter of each other thousands of miles from Earth. Simple.

What will the orbital spacecraft of tomorrow look like? If Dassault Aviation has its way, it could be similar to its Véhicule Orbital Réutilisable de Transport et d’Exploration (VORTEX) reusable spaceplane unveiled at the recent Paris Air Show.

A new collaborative project dubbed the COSMOS-Web field has compiled the most comprehensive cosmic map ever, including images of the early universe as far back as 13.5 billion years.

Maybe cars, trucks, and motorcycles aren't exciting enough, because Honda is moving into space vehicles. The company has announced that it has successfully flown a reusable rocket to an altitude of almost 300 m (1,000 ft) and then safely landed it.

ESA's Solar Orbiter deep-space probe has made history, returning the first-ever images of the Sun's south pole. It's a world first that sheds a great deal of light on the mysteries of our parent star, but it wasn't easy to achieve. Very far from it.

Dawn Aerospace seems to want to play with the big kids as it announces that it will be selling its spaceplane directly to customers the same way that airliner manufacturers market their aircraft, suggesting a major shift in space launch business models.

A US startup is looking to our closest satellite to fill a resources gap here on Earth. Interlune and partner Vermeer have revealed a full-scale excavator prototype that forms a key component of its lunar resource Harvester.

On May 31, Voyager 1 will be the guest of honor at what may be the most exclusive concert in history. To mark the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II, ESA will beam a live performance of "By the Beautiful Blue Danube" to NASA's deep space probe.

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.