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"It's the only launch vehicle that can meet the orbit, the schedule and the cost to achieve something unprecedented with emerging technology."A history-making robotic rescue mission scheduled to launch next year will fly on a rocket dropped from a plane.In September, NASA announced that it has chosen Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the altitude of its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a space telescope whose orbit has gotten dangerously low since its November 2004 launch...The $500 million Swift observatory was built by Orbital Sciences, a company that in 2014 became Orbital ATK, which was then acquired by Northrop Grumman...

Explanation: Some comets are regular guests of our solar neighborhood; others come by only once, never to return. We won’t have another chance to see Comet C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś), which is currently making its way through the inner Solar System. The hyperbolic orbit of this comet indicates that it will likely become an interstellar traveler. Comet Wierzchoś is today near its closest approach to the Earth, passing roughly the same distance from the Earth as is the Sun. The featured 30-minute exposure was taken last week in Chile and shows a 5-degree long ion tail as well as three shorter...

OpenAI's GPT-5.2 has derived a new formula for gluon interactions, overturning assumptions of zero amplitude and advancing theoretical physics. For a long, long time physicists treated this interaction as a cosmic impossibility — a mathematical dead end so absolute it was taught almost with the certainty of Newton's laws and the elegance of Einstein's equations. Zero, in quantum physics, isn't a shrug; it's a verdict. And this particular verdict had stood unchallenged for decades. But every so often, science gets a jolt — a falling apple, a bending beam of starlight… or, in 2026, an AI model that refuses to...

Once in a lifetime! Scientists Track a Green Comet on a Permanent Escape Path | 9:43 NASA Space News | 597K subscribers | 2,030 views | February 16, 2026

This active volcano still spews gas -- and a major eruption could trigger a deadly tsunami. Locals live in its shadow, knowing history could repeat itself. Nisyros is a small, volcanic island and municipality in the Dodecanese group of islands in the Aegean Sea, located between Kos and Tilos. The Volcano That Could Wipe Out the Greek Islands Volcano Documentary | 44:43 Autentic Documentary | 95.8K subscribers | 58,260 views | December 9, 2025

Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling statistic stands out. Even though nearly all stars are expected to have planets and most stars form in pairs, planets that orbit both stars in a pair are rare. Of the more than 6,000 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, confirmed to date - most of them found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) - only 14 are observed to orbit binary stars. There should be hundreds. Where are all the planets with two suns, like Tatooine in Star Wars? ... ... Over time,...

Scientists watching the nearby Fomalhaut star system have directly seen two protoplanets smash together for the first time. Then, they saw it happen again...The Fomalhaut system is no stranger to such crashes. It's famously known as the "Eye of Sauron" due to its resemblance to the fiery, all-seeing eye from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of The Rings franchise. The likeness comes from the spectacular dust belt that surrounds Fomalhaut at a distance of 133 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being equal to 93 million miles (150 million km) — the average distance between the sun and Earth.

Jupiter is slightly smaller and flatter than scientists thought for decades, a new study finds. Researchers used radio data from the Juno spacecraft to refine measurements of the solar system's largest planet. Although the differences between the current and previous measurements are small, they are improving models of Jupiter's interior and of other gas giants like it outside the solar system, the team reported Feb. 2 in the journal Nature Astronomy. "Textbooks will need to be updated," study co-author Yohai Kaspi, a planetary scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said in a statement. "The size of Jupiter...

A monster sunspot is taking aim at Earth after firing off dozens of powerful flares Sunday and Monday (Feb. 1-2) — including the most intense solar eruption in years. Elevated geomagnetic activity — possibly resulting in vibrant northern lights at lower latitudes than usual — is possible Thursday (Feb. 5), according to an alert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). However, it's still too soon to know for certain. The sunspot, called region 4366, appeared suddenly several days ago and has rapidly grown to roughly half the size of the infamous Carrington Event sunspot,...

BREAKING: SpaceX wants to turn Space into the World’s Biggest AI Data Center. • SpaceX is seeking approval to launch and operate up to one million satellites designed to function as orbital data centers. • These satellites would provide massive computing power to support advanced artificial intelligence and data processing. • The system would rely on near constant solar energy in space, reducing operating costs and environmental impact compared to Earth based data centers. • Satellites would operate between 500 km and 2,000 km in altitude, across multiple orbital shells, to handle global demand. • High speed laser links would...

Artemis II Wet Dress Rehearsal Delayed, SpaceX to Merge with xAI!? | 4:42 Ellie in Space | 216K subscribers | 4,773 views | January 30, 2026

A new study reveals that tiny fragments of Earth's atmosphere are transported to and absorbed by the moon via gusts of solar wind and our planet's magnetic field, upending a 20-year-old theory based on NASA's Apollo lunar samples... This surprising case of cosmic cannibalism is thanks to supercharged solar winds and, more importantly, our own planet's magnetic field...Ever since NASA's Apollo missions first returned lunar samples to Earth in the early 1970s, scientists have been puzzled by traces of volatiles -- substances that vaporize at relatively low temperatures, including water, carbon dioxide, helium, argon, and nitrogen -- that they found...

Every year from mid- to late February, the setting sun hits Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall along the eastern edge of the soaring El Capitan at just the right angle, creating the illusion that the 1,575-foot waterfall is on fire. This Yosemite National Park phenomenon, aka “firefall,” is ultra-popular, and this year is expected to be even more crowded. For the first time since 2021, park reservations are not required to visit Yosemite during firefall. The past 12 months have been tumultuous for the National Park Service, with a 43-day government shutdown, changing free-entry days, and price increases. Now, its rangers will...

Explanation: A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar....

A solar storm has just impacted Earth that's been one of the strongest in the last 20 years, with an immediate G4 geomagnetic storm starting whilst a S4 radiation was already blasting the Earth with high-energy solar particles. With bulk solar wind velocity greater than 1000 km/s and magnetic field values currently creater than 60 nT, this is a near-Carrington level impact and certainly a historic solar storm. Geophysicist Stefan Burns forecasting this possibility more than a year in advance based on the latest space science and more, and now he reports for you LIVE on the current historic space...

Will this mysterious object ever calm down?? Weeks after its close approach with Earth, 3I Atlas is speeding up, pulsing, and displaying an unbelievable 18 Anomalies! Here's the latest!

The asteroid, 2025 MN45, completes a full rotation once every 1.88 minutes, meaning it must have a very high strength to keep itself together. An artist's impression of the asteroid 2025 MN45. NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/P. Marenfeld ===================================================================== The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has observed a record-breaking ultra-fast-rotating asteroid. The space rock is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500 meters (0.3 miles) to have ever been observed. The asteroid, designated 2025 MN45, completes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes. Announced at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, it was one of 1,900 new...

Explanation: In 2011, on January 20, NASA's NanoSail-D2 unfurled a very thin and very reflective 10 square meter sail becoming the first solar sail spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Often considered the stuff of science fiction, sailing through space was suggested 400 years ago by astronomer Johannes Kepler, who had observed comet tails blown by the solar wind. But modern solar sail spacecraft designs, like NanoSail-D2, Japan's interplanetary spacecraft IKAROS, or the Planetary Society's Lightsail A, rely on the small but continuous pressure from sunlight itself for thrust. Glinting in the sunlight as it circled planet Earth, NanoSail-D2's solar sail...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 February 29 Julius Caesar and Leap Days Credit: Rune Rysstad Explanation: Today, February 29th, is a leap day - a relatively rare occurrence. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar, pictured above in a self-decreed minted coin, created a calendar system that added one leap day every four years. Acting on advice by Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar did this to make up for the fact that the Earth's year...

December 25, 2003, Christmas DayA Message to Earth Apollo 8 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on December 21, 1968. It was the first mission to the moon with a crew aboard, and its purpose was to orbit the moon in preparation for a future landing on the moon. On Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit and the crew began to relay back to Earth live television pictures of the moon and the Earth. They ended their broadcast by saying: “For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to...