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Stunning new images snapped in orbit show LightSail 2’s solar sail outstretched and ready to take on the next phase of its mission. The Planetary Society announced that the 18-foot-wide Mylar sail had successfully deployed earlier this week, following a late-June launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It’s just one five-thousandth of an inch thick, or about the width of a human hair. The milestone could pave the way for lower-cost spacecraft propulsion, allowing small craft to be driven by sunlight.

Seconds after the engine fired up, SpaceX stopped its first attempt to fly its prototype “Starship” rocket more than a few feet off the ground at the company’s facility in Boca Chica Beach, Texas on Wednesday. The prototype rocket did not lift off from the ground, as SpaceX engineer Kate Tice noted while hosting a surprise livestream of the test. The rocket’s engine started but the prototype did not move and an enduring flame shot skywards near the top of the rocket. SpaceX was intending to “hop” the vehicle in a short flight of about 65 feet in the air....

A trio of researchers at the University of California has found evidence that suggests there is far more ice on the surface of the moon than has been thought. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Lior Rubanenko, Jaahnavee Venkatraman and David Paige describe their study of similarities between ice on Mercury and shadowed regions on the moon and what they found. Prior researchers using data from the Arecibo Observatory and also NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft found that there are cratered areas on Mercury's poles that appear shadowed from Earth. Data from the LRO probe that was intentionally crashed...

On July 3, 1969, just 17 days before Neil Armstrong and Ed Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, the USSR made its second attempt to test-fire its own moon rocket, known as N1. No official announcement about the secret mission had ever been made, but in subsequent passes over the Soviet test range in Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, U.S. spy satellites glimpsed utter devastation at one of the two launch pads known to host the moon rocket. The Soviet Union didn't know it at the time, but its hopes for reaching the moon also ended on that charred launch pad in 1969.

China launched the space station in September 2016, and quickly sent up a pair of taikonauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, to conduct a variety of experiments on a 30 day mission. China launched a second, uncrewed mission in April 2017 to refuel the station to test out a new spacecraft and conduct some “robotic demonstrations.” That was the last mission to the station, which was never intended as a permanent habitat in orbit. Along with the Tiangong-1, the two stations provided the Chinese space program with valuable experience in orbit. They demonstrated not only that they could launch and...

A Russian space capsule with three astronauts aboard has docked with the International Space Station after a fast-track trip to the orbiting laboratory. The Soyuz capsule docked at 22:48 GMT Saturday, just six hours and 20 minutes after blasting off from Russia’s launch complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The launch took place on the 50th anniversary of the day U.S. astronauts landed on the moon. The capsule is carrying Andrew Morgan of the United States on his first spaceflight, Russian Alexander Skvortsov on his third mission to the space station and Italian Luca Parmitano.

The Washington Monument has been transformed into a stunning tribute to the first moon landing through a dazzling series of projections. Crowds packed the National Mall to watch the 17-minute show, which was projected three times each on Friday and Saturday, marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Cheers rose from the crowd as the Saturn V rocket was seen lifting off. The show also included various scenes of the stages separating, the moon landing, and splash-down as the hero astronauts returned to Earth.

The capsule used by Neil Armstrong is deteriorating and in danger of crumbling into dust. The capsule or gondola used by Armstrong from the time he was a test pilot, X-15 pilot, and finally Gemini and Apollo astronaut is in sad condition. He not only trained in the gondola for the various space programs, but worked to develop flight controls with the engineers and technicians of the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) in Johnsvile, PA. He also used his experience there to become a NASA expert in flight simulation, one of his primary roles in the US space program. The...

India aborted the launch on Monday of a spacecraft intended to land on the far side of the moon less than an hour before liftoff. The Chandrayaan-2 mission was called off due to a a 'technical snag', according to Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman B.R. Guruprasad said. Countdown to launch of the 640-ton, 14-story rocket launcher halted at T-56 minutes, 24 seconds and did not resume.

The Thirty Meter Telescope is being built atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii's tallest mountain Illustration showing the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island.Thirty Meter Telescope / via AP file HONOLULU -- Construction on a giant telescope will start again next week after lengthy court battles and passionate protests from those who say building it on Hawaii's tallest mountain will desecrate land sacred to some Native Hawaiians. State officials announced Wednesday that the road to the top of Mauna Kea mountain on the Big Island will be closed starting Monday as equipment is delivered. Scientists revere the...

A European Vega launcher failed Wednesday night around two minutes after liftoff from French Guiana and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, destroying an Airbus-built surveillance satellite for the United Arab Emirates. Arianespace, the French launch service provider in charge of Wednesday night’s mission, declared a failure minutes after the 98-foot-tall (30-meter) Vega rocket took off from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern coast of South America. Luce Fabreguettes, Arianespace’s executive vice president of missions, operations and purchasing, said the failure occurred around the time of ignition of the Vega rocket’s solid-fueled Zefiro 23 second stage. “As you have seen,...

The researchers used a special statistical technique to determine whether deaths from cancer and heart disease likely had a common cause — in this case, the common cause would be space radiation. But their results did not point to a common cause of death. "If ionizing radiation is impacting the risk of death due to cancer and cardiovascular disease, the effect is not dramatic," the authors wrote in their study, published July 4 in the journal Scientific Reports. Still, the study cannot determine whether longer missions would pose different risks. "It is important to note that future missions of deep...

Each new image of Eta Carinae reveals new subtle details, streams of light and filaments of gas and dust, that astronomers hadn't observed before. Photo by Hubble/NASA/ESA ================================================================ July 1 (UPI) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has captured Eta Carinae's fireworks in red, white and blue, just in time for Independence Day. Eta Carinae is a binary star system located 7,500 light-years away in the Carina constellation. One of its two stars, which orbit each other, is large, highly unstable and nearing the end of its life. The dynamic stellar duo occasionally produces violent outbursts. The system's most famous outburst...

Whether it was the Big Bang, Midas or God himself, we don’t really need to unlock the mystery of the origins of gold when we’ve already identified an asteroid worth $700 quintillion in precious heavy metals. If anything launches this metals mining space race, it will be this asteroid--Psyche 16, taking up residence between Mars and Jupiter and carrying around enough heavy metals to net every single person on the planet close to a trillion dollars. The massive quantities of gold, iron and nickel contained in this asteroid are mind-blowing. The discovery has been made. Now, it’s a question of...

The state of Hawaii on Thursday issued a notice to proceed for construction to start on the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope project on the Big Island after four “unauthorized structures” were removed from the areas near the telescope’s site on the summit of Mauna Kea. Construction on the long-delayed project could start as early as next month, which would be exactly 10 years after the telescope's international board selected the Hawaii site. The state’s agencies involved will work with TMT officials to determine the start date. The notice gives gives the contractors and workers involved in the construction authorization...

A real-time journey through the first landing on the Moon This website consists entirely of original historical mission material. Apollo 11 in Real-Time Included real-time elements: All mission control film footage All TV transmissions and onboard film footage 2,000 photographs 11,000 hours of Mission Control audio 240 hours of space-to-ground audio All onboard recorder audio 15,000 searchable utterances Post-mission commentary Astromaterials sample data

A tiny, old star just 12 light-years away might host two temperate, rocky planets, astronomers announced today. If they’re confirmed, both of the newly spotted worlds are nearly identical to Earth in mass, and both planets are in orbits that could allow liquid water to trickle and puddle on their surfaces. Scientists estimate that the stellar host, known as Teegarden’s star, is at least eight billion years old, or nearly twice the sun’s age. That means any planets orbiting it are presumably as ancient, so life as we know it has had more than enough time to evolve. And for...

NASA says there’s a chance SpaceX can launch two astronauts aboard the company’s Crew Dragon capsule by the end of the year if SpaceX can make fixes that caused a catastrophic test failure. On April 20, the Crew Dragon slated for the in-flight abort test exploded on a test stand at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station an instant before a planned static firing of the capsule’s eight Super Draco abort engines. No one was injured, but the Demo 1 capsule was destroyed. Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said the capsule originally intended to carry the first...

A unique “double asteroid” was photographed by a powerful telescope as it whizzed by Earth last month at over 43,000 mph. The asteroid, classified as 1999 KW4, is made up of two components — a larger body orbited by a smaller one separated by about 1.6 miles. It got as close as 3.2 million miles to Earth on May 25 — about 14 times the distance from Earth to the Moon, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a news release Monday. The double asteroid, which has an orbit well known to scientists, is not an impact threat to Earth,...

The Mars 2020 rover is set to land in Jezero Crater, which scientists estimate was once filled with water. Photo by NASA/MRO ================================================================= May 28 (UPI) -- A new photo captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and shared online this week features the landing site for the space agency's Mars 2020 mission. The Mars 2020 rover, scheduled to launch next year, is expected to land in the Jezero Crater, located in a region of Mars known as the Syrtis Major quadrangle. The crater is thought to have once been filled with water, and its watery history is visible in the...