Spacecraft

Astronomers are tracking nearby asteroids, but there’s one glaring blindspot in the sky – the Sun. Thankfully, ESA plans to plug the gap soon with NEOMIR, a mission that will give us advance warning of any Earth-bound rocks from that direction.

Evolution has shaped the load-bearing skeletons of animals over aeons with incredible precision. Now, an accelerated simulation of the evolution process is helping NASA create stronger, lighter parts for its spacecraft projects – in record time.

Sci-fi fans may recall the bipedal robots from the 1972 film Silent Running, which performed maintenance on the outside of the spaceship. Well, the new MARM robot is reminiscent of them – except it has three limbs, for optimum dexterity and mobility.

Dark matter remains elusive despite decades of searching. Now physicists have proposed a new experiment that would try to find signals by sending atomic clocks to where dark matter should be at its most dense – right near the Sun.

With a reported sonic boom, the US Space Force's open-secret X-37B spaceplane returned to Earth on Saturday. The robotic craft touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:22 am EST after a record-breaking 908 days in orbit.

Astronomers have been keenly watching the asteroid Didymos since the historic DART mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into it last month. And now, Hubble has detected something unexpected – the asteroid has sprouted two tails.

Last week, NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, and now images have been released of the collision and aftermath from a suite of telescopes – including Hubble and James Webb in their first collaboration. One even shows a new 10,000-km tail.

It appears Virgin Galactic is looking to ramp up its commercial space services, placing orders for two more WhiteKnightTwo motherships from Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Services to support the air launch of Virgin's SpaceShipTwo spaceplane.

NASA has selected a fascinating new project for further development, known as the Diffractive Solar Sail. By bending light before it hits the sail, this device could propel spacecraft more efficiently than conventional propulsion technologies.

Inspired by seashells, scientists at Sandia National Labs have engineered a versatile new material that’s incredibly inexpensive, strong, lightweight, and heat resistant. The material could find use in shielding for spacecraft or fusion facilities.

The James Webb Space Telescope has snapped its first in-focus image. With this milestone, the telescope is now set to meet or even exceed its original science goals. It was also recently spotted by another spacecraft in the area.

Venus should have been Earth’s twin, but clearly that’s not the case today with its thick poisonous atmosphere and barren rocky surface. Now, as part of its Discovery Program, NASA has selected two new missions to Venus to investigate what went wrong.