Spacecraft

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.

Virgin Galactic has put a recent setback behind it to reach space for only the third time in its history, and the first time since relocating to its new Spaceport America base in New Mexico last year.

New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance, celebrating by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1 – or at least, the patch of sky where it is.

The secrets of the mysterious EmDrive thruster – which stumped both NASA and Chinese research teams by delivering measurable thrust without a propellant – have finally been unlocked. The thrust comes from ... drum roll ... repeated experimental error.

Virgin Galactic has wheeled out the next-generation version of the vehicle designed to carry human tourists into space, showing off a shimmering, mirror-like spaceship named the VSS Imagine that features a modular design.