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Explanation: Solar System bodies make deep space exploration more fuel efficient! Today’s video shows the Psyche spacecraft gaining speed and changing its trajectory with minimal fuel spent due to a gravity assist from Mars in May 2026. Mars has an average orbital speed of almost 87,000 km/h (54,000 mph) around the Sun. Its orbital motion and its gravity allowed Mars to pull Psyche along with it, increasing the spacecraft’s speed. Gravity assists have been used since 1959’s Luna 3 mission to allow for spacecraft (the Voyagers, Cassini) to reach farther than they could with fuel alone. This assist helped the...

A groundbreaking mission that explored Pluto and distant solar system objects in unprecedented detail has awakened from its longest sleep ever — and it’s 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft went into a planned hibernation mode on August 7, 2025, and woke up on June 23 using commands stored on its main computer. The mission’s flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed that New Horizons is in great shape and ready to transmit a stream of science data gathered during hibernation from its location in the region...

The space between stars just got a little sweeter. Astronomers have detected a type of sugar in space that's also found in raspberries and self-tanners. The sugar, called erythrulose, lurks in what's called the interstellar medium: thin clouds of gas and dust littered between stars. Sugar does more than sweeten tea and powder doughnuts. Different varieties fuel our cells and even make up DNA. Scientists are itching to know how sugars form because they're a key ingredient for life as we know it. Using two dish-shaped radio telescopes in Spain, researchers collected data from a large gas cloud near the...

Ancient mathematical texts discovered at the Maya city of Xultun in Guatemala have revealed the name of a Maya astronomer for the first time, offering rare evidence of the scholars behind one of the ancient world’s most advanced systems of mathematics and astronomy. Researchers reconstructed and transcribed dozens of tiny inscriptions found on the plaster walls of a small building at the site. Their work uncovered a unique mathematical formula and identified its author, marking the first known case of a Classic Maya mathematician-astronomer being directly credited for his work. The findings were published in the journal Antiquity. Wall writings...

A detailed view of Halley's Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry. Image credit: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) ============================================================================ The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous textile works in the world, and for the first time in more than 900 years it has returned to England to be exhibited at the British Museum. The work of art depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings of 1066 and the Norman conquest of England. It also depicts an important astronomical event, the return of Halley’s comet. Although not in the right place. First of all, despite...

Satellites don't always stay in orbit. As they get closer to Earth, atmospheric drag can pull them lower and lower until they burn up, with solar activity speeding up the process. NASA's Swift Space Observatory is facing that fate -- its orbit is decaying, and if left alone, it will be destroyed in a matter of months. But in a first-of-its-kind mission, Katalyst Space, a startup, is teaming up with NASA to try and rescue Swift using the company's newly developed robotic spacecraft, LINK. "This is a historic mission, you know, some would call it the first of its kind,...

The colossal Stratolaunch carrier plane rolled out of its hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, today (May 31) to undergo fueling tests. It's the first public look at the full craft —which is designed to launch rockets into orbit from the sky — since construction began. "We're excited to announce that Stratolaunch aircraft has reached a major milestone in its journey toward providing convenient, reliable, and routine access to low-Earth orbit," Stratolaunch Systems Corp. CEO Jean Floyd said in a statement. "This marks the completion of the initial aircraft-construction phase and the beginning of the...

Explanation: Sometimes we can all use a little help from a friend. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory needs a boost to stay in orbit after almost 22 years of service. This video shows an artist's visualization of the Swift Boost Mission: The Katalyst's LINK spacecraft was launched aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3 and it is now en route to rendezvous with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit over the course of the next several months. This type of maneuver has never been attempted before. If successful, it will be the technology demonstration of...

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific’s Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday. Scanning...

SpaceX may have just dropped its biggest hint yet about what comes after Starship Flight 13. Indeed, FINALLY! Starship's Next Giant Leap may be here as the new filings point toward an Orbital Return Demo that could mark the next major milestone on the road to full reusability. With that work continues at Starbase on Pads 1 and 2, the Gigabay, and future launch infrastructure. Elsewhere this week, we cover Falcon 9 launches carrying BlueBird satellites, Starlink, and another classified NRO mission, Cargo Dragon’s return from the International Space Station, Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander preparing for launch, Ariane 6’s impressive...

"A robotic spacecraft built in nine months by Arizona-based startup Katalyst Space Technologies is set to launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a first-of-its-kind mission to grab NASA's sinking Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and push it back to a safe orbit — the first time any commercial vehicle has attempted to capture an operational government satellite that was never designed to be serviced. "

Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, and it's not hard to see why. Image credit: Resul Muslu/Shutterstock.com ============================================================================ Did a cataclysmic comet impact 13,000 years ago spark the rise of civilization? That's the explosive claim behind a study of carvings at the world-famous site of Göbekli Tepe, which researchers say encode not just a catastrophic comet strike, but the world's oldest solar calendar. Located in southern Türkiye, Göbekli Tepe is a pre-pottery Neolithic complex that is estimated to be around 12,000 years old. Analyzing an intricately carved pillar at the site, the study authors propose...

The near-Earth Object 2009 FD, as seen by the ESO's Very Large Telescope (Image Credit: ESO) Every year, more than 5,000 tons of material with cosmic origins lands on Earth’s surface, with as much as 15,000 tons of this “space dust” making its way into the atmosphere but vaporizing during reentry. The resulting rain of micrometeorites that reaches our planet consists mostly of tiny objects anywhere from 30 to 200 micrometers in size, based on past studies. But what are the origins of these large volumes of material that accumulate over time as they shower the Earth throughout the year?...

If they were visible to the naked eye, these structures would be huge in the sky. Image Credit: UCLan/Stellarium ========================================================================= The cosmological principle states that, on the largest scales, the universe is uniform and isotropic. In other words, it should look broadly the same no matter where you are or which direction you look. You would not expect to find a single enormous structure in one particular region of the sky. Finding two in relatively close proximity is even more surprising. Five years ago, researchers discovered the Giant Arc, a vast crescent of galaxies stretching 3.3 billion light years across...

The Chinese Tianwen-2 mission has captured the first imagery of a space object that some astronomers are calling Earth’s “quasi-moon.” The object was captured in images released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), after its Tianwen-2 spacecraft reached the tiny asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. Initially discovered in 2016, the asteroid became the target of a sample return mission launched by China on 28 May 2025. Officially the CNSA’s second mission under its Planetary Exploration of China Program, Tianwen-2 aims to return close to 100 grams of samples from the surface of the small object. Earth’s Mysterious Quasi-Moons Quasi-moons are the...

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter was designed to fly five times on Mars, instead it flew 72. For nearly three years, the four-pound drone defied expectations, becoming the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on another planet. It scouted terrain, mapped hazards, and proved aviation works in Mars' thin atmosphere. On January 18, 2024, during what should have been a routine test, its rotor blades shattered on landing, ending its flying but not its mission. In a valley sculpted by ancient rivers, the small helicopter now rests partially buried in red dust, one blade severed and lying 49 feet away in...

Explanation: Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? The answer seems likely to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock. The unusual asteroid Itokawa was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005 which imaged and documented its unusual structure and mysterious lack of craters. Analyses of the border regions between smooth and rugged sections indicate that jostling of the asteroid might be creating segregation between large and small rocks near the surface, like the Brazil nut effect. The robotic Hayabusa actually touched down on one...

The orbits of long-period comets suggest a star passed by our Sun and caused some havoc we're still seeing. Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, is a very famous long-period comet. Image Credit: ESO/E. Slawik ================================================================= The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light-years away. This has not always been the case, as all stars in the galaxies move about. Observations suggest that just 2.5 million years ago, there was a star that passed very close to the Solar System, and this passage might still have consequences we can see today. Data from the ESA Gaia...

This image will help us discover countless new exoplanets. The full Euclid image. Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CFHT, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre and E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay) Pointing the telescope to look at the central region of the galaxy wasn't just because it’s pretty or because Euclid can. The research team will use this incredible image and the data behind it to discover and characterize planets. This is possible thanks to a technique known as microlensing. Any object with mass warps spacetime. Galaxies, clusters, and black holes can create a strong gravitational lensing effect: space-time warps so much that...

The June Bootid meteor shower is active each year from June 26th until July 2nd. It peaks on June 27th. Normally the shower is very weak, but occasional outbursts produce a hundred or more meteors per hour.The shower's radiant lies in the constellation Bootes (right ascension 14h 56m, declination 48o).The source of the June Bootids is periodic comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke.June Bootid meteoroids hit Earth's atmosphere with a velocity of 18 km/s (40,000 mph).They are considered slow-moving meteors.On June 27th, 1998, northern sky watchers were surprised when meteors suddenly began to stream out of the constellation Bootes. Observers saw as many as...