For all those out there keeping score when it comes to NASA Apollo-era gossip: Yes, the moon landing did happen, but no, the Saturn V rocket wasn’t so loud that it melted concrete, and those sound waves didn’t light grass on fire up to a mile away f…
Teams working with one of NASA’s newest spacecraft have made an unexpected discovery years before it’s set to reach its ultimate destination: The smallest of the asteroids the probe plans to visit is orbited by an even smaller moon. The Lucy mi…
We’re almost two months into the monsoon season in the US Southwest, and in that time well over 2,000 gallons of rainwater has fallen onto the roof of my small off-grid home, where it’s been caught and diverted into two large tanks in my backyard. T…
In an effort to literally get more bang for its buck, the US Space Force has given Elon Musk’s SpaceX the green light to use recycled rocket boosters for upcoming Falcon Heavy launches of US spy satellites.Bloomberg reported Thursday that …
Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX pioneered autonomous landing of orbital rockets, using droneships and even plans to catch its Super Heavy boosters using giant automated arms attached to its launch tower. But when it came time to negotiate getting …
Gravity: hard to live with it and inconceivable to imagine the universe without it. A comet got caught at the hot end of that punchline over the weekend when the cosmic snowball was captured careening into the sun early Sunday by NASA’s Solar and He…
A decade ago it was a sky crane, a be-mohawked NASA engineer named Bobak and a $2.5 billion rover called Curiosity that took my career in a new direction. Mainly, it was the high-resolution photos that NASA’s state-of-the-art rolling robot sent ba…
A pair of brilliant fireballs lit up skies over the central United States this past weekend, including one caused by a bolide big enough to trigger a sonic boom over parts of Texas on Sunday night. Fireballs, or unusually bright meteors, are a…
This last week of July marks the beginning of the most active and exciting period of the year for meteor fans. The most photogenic meteor shower on the calendar is now active, along with the respected Southern Delta Aquariids and the lesser-kno…
Elon Musk’s companies famously don’t spend much on marketing, relying instead on their founder’s massive following, but now SpaceX is making a move into merchandising with the help of Mattel.The toymaker said Wednesday it will begin releasing “Space…
What’s happening
Eruptions on the sun could trigger a geomagnetic storm on Earth this week.
Why it matters
Extreme space weather can disrupt radio communications and even affect the power grid. This time it’s most likely that the main …
A rapidly expanding wildfire reached one of the largest collections of telescopes and other astronomical equipment in the US on Friday morning.The National Science Foundation, which operates the Kitt Peak Observatory on a remote ridge in the Tohono …
SpaceX has cleared a major hurdle toward sending Starship to space, but it has a list of changes to make before Elon Musk’s Mars rocket can fly. The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday said it’s completed an environmental assessment of t…
What’s happening
For the first time, astronomers have used a quirk of gravity’s effect on starlight to spot a “free-floating” black hole.
Why it matters
Until now, the only way to spy on the mysterious cosmic objects was by looking for…
NASA is delaying a cargo flight to the International Space Station out of an abundance of caution over the SpaceX Dragon possibly breathing fire from the wrong place. The space agency had hoped to launch the capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket on F…