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Sometimes, what goes up doesn’t come back down — instead, it becomes a problem. Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, millions of pieces orbit the Earth, from broken satellites to lost screws and tiny hunks of splintered paint. The International Space Station has to dodge it. Sometimes, space junk crashes into other space junk, creating more space junk. And while there have been many proposals for technologies to capture and destroy it, there’s not been a system-level plan for dealing with it in a comprehensive way. This week, researchers at England’s University of Surrey published a paper...

NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe will continue its almost half-century of service by delivering yet another milestone: by this time next year, it should have reached a distance of 1 light-day from Earth. Based on the most recent estimates, the revolutionary Voyager 1 space probe is expected to achieve the feat on November 15, 2026, continuing its reign as the farthest-travelled human-made object. After flying by Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan, the spacecraft continued its journey into interstellar space. The Speed of Light Based on present-day physics, scientists know the speed of light is the greatest speed at which anything in...

Damage to a Russian launch site has stopped Moscow from sending people into space for the first time in over six decades, it has been reported. Moscow’s space agency Roscosmos said that Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan had sustained damage during a launch on Thursday carrying Russian and American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). But Russian space bloggers said the damage to Russia’s only launch site for crewed missions was more serious than authorities were claiming. One expert, Vitaly Egorov, said if the damage is as suspected, Moscow will have lost the ability to launch people into space for...

After successfully entering orbit, the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft completed its status setup and successfully docked with the forward port of the Tianhe core module of the space station at 15:50 Beijing time on November 25, 2025. Following the docking, the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft will enter the combined docking section and will subsequently serve as the return spacecraft for the Shenzhou-21 astronaut crew.Currently, the Shenzhou-21 astronaut crew is in good condition in orbit and is completing all planned tasks. The Shenzhou-20 spacecraft will continue to remain in orbit to conduct relevant experiments.After the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft's return was delayed on November 5 due to...

Success! #Shenzhou22LaunchSuccess# ] At 12:11 PM Beijing time on November 25, 2025, the Long March-2F Y22 carrier rocket carrying the #Shenzhou22# spacecraft was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Approximately 10 minutes later, the spacecraft successfully separated from the rocket and entered its predetermined orbit, marking a complete success for the launch mission. After entering orbit, the spacecraft will autonomously and rapidly rendezvous and dock with the space station assembly according to the predetermined procedures.The Shenzhou-22 spacecraft is unmanned and carries space food, space medicine, fresh fruits and vegetables, a device for dealing with cracks in the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft's...

AMERICAN GENERALS once spoke in euphemisms about the possibility of fighting a war in space, preferring to talk about space “dominance” rather than the grim prospect of shattering satellites in orbit. Now they speak openly about the need to launch weapons from, within and towards space in any future conflict with Russia or China. In 2026 there are five areas to watch that could shape the direction of this intensifying competition. One is President Donald Trump’s plan to build a “Golden Dome” missile-defence shield to protect America. Much of that project is a rebranding of older, more prosaic efforts to...

For the first time, astronomers have picked up a radio signal from the mysterious interstellar visitor as it speeds through our Solar System. South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope detected absorption lines from OH molecules...Harvard professor Avi Loeb, who has been studying 3I/ATLAS since the summer, said: 'These molecules leave a distinct radio signature that telescopes like MeerKAT can pick up.'... Optical images captured on November 9 reveal that 3I/ATLAS is ejecting enormous jets of material both toward and away from the sun. The jets stretch nearly 600,000 miles sunward and almost 1.8 million miles in the opposite direction, roughly the...

A 62-page document written by President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again pick to run NASA, billionaire Jared Isaacman, outlines a sweeping, ambitious, and at times controversial plan for the space agency.... The leak — according to a recent Ars Technica report and a source who confirmed the account to CNN — looked to have been part of an effort by Duffy, who is temporarily running NASA, to spur controversy and potentially thwart Isaacman’s renomination... A Mars shot and nuclear propulsion One eye-popping proposal in Project Athena is to set up a new Mars program, dubbed “Olympus.”...The document also includes numerous mentions of...

Two-time space traveler and billionaire Jared Isaacman had been on the cusp of becoming NASA’s next administrator last May when President Donald Trump yanked his nomination. Trump has since changed his mind. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era,” Trump wrote Tuesday on a post on Truth Social announcing he was putting Isaacman back in a position to lead the agency. Isaacman had sat through the Senate confirmation hearings...

And it's not even Boeing's fault! Bad joke, I know. I kid, I kid. 3 Chinese astronauts stranded in space station after debris strikes return capsule https://t.co/Z246fzZTKH pic.twitter.com/CS1anBno7D— New York Post (@nypost) November 6, 2025Three Chinese astronauts, who were slated to return home after six months on the Chinese space station, are currently stranded after it was discovered that some space debris struck their capsule at some point during their stay. A Chinese space crew is stranded at the country’s Tiangong space station after tiny pieces of space debris were believed to have struck their return capsule, China’s spaceflight agency...

A global plea is growing for Elon Musk to rescue three Chinese astronauts stranded in space after their return capsule was reportedly struck by an 'unknown object.'The Shenzhou-20 team, mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong and crew members Colonel Chen Zhongrui and Colonel Wang Jie, launched to China's Tiangong space station in April and were set to return home on November 5. But officials revealed this week that their spacecraft may have sustained damage while docked in orbit for the past six months.Chinese officials are unsure what struck the spacecraft, but the damage is believed to have been caused by...

An Atlas V 551 rocket, configured with five side-mounted solid rocket boosters and a standard-length payload fairing, will utilize several launch optimization features to place the ViaSat-3 Flight 2 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The craft is one of the heaviest single-satellite payloads. Liftoff will occur from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Launch Readiness Review completed The Launch Readiness Review (LRR) is GO for Wednesday’s liftoff of the United Launch Alliance commercial Atlas V rocket with one of the most sophisticated and powerful commercial communications satellites — the ViaSat-3 Flight 2 ultra-high-capacity broadband spacecraft....

The space environment would provide natural radiative cooling, as well as unlimited solar energy. With the generative AI boom in full force, scientists have warned of the immense power requirements of data centers used to train and utilize these systems. Now, a team of researchers from NTU Singapore has joined the call to place data centers in space. Doing so would pave the way for sustainable computing, the claim. According to the team, space data centers would be powered by round-the-clock solar energy and would harness free cooling. Crucially, all of this is possible using existing technologies. Sending AI infrastructure...

Look out, Frodo!A bright galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole that spews out cosmic radiation is pointing straight at us. Thankfully, the object, unimaginatively dubbed “PKS 1424+240,” is located roughly 7.4 billion light-years away and likely won’t pose much of a danger. But that hasn’t stopped a group of excited astronomers from renaming it: the “Eye of Sauron,” the symbol adopted by the Dark Lord in JRR Tolkien’s epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. A new image of the object was recently unveiled, revealing a bright, hot center with cosmic waves spinning around it, spewing a jet of plasma...

Indeed, even vocal supporters of America’s effort are now expressing doubts that Nasa will be able to beat the Chinese space agency in the race to send humans back to the lunar surface. China has been making great strides in its lunar effort and is targeting a Moon landing by 2030. America’s programme, on the other hand, is beset with problems, including the lack of a working lunar landing system and lunar surface spacesuits that are behind schedule.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth, with up to four burning up in the atmosphere each day, according to space trackers.Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told EarthSky that he has recorded “an average of between one to two Starlink satellites deorbiting each day in 2025.” That number, he said, could climb to around five per day as SpaceX continues to expand its global network. . . . . . .There are currently about 20,000 objects being tracked in low-Earth orbit, including 12,000 working satellites, 8,500 of which belong to Starlink. . ....

“We’re just going to pursue excellence … that’s how you win a space race and that’s just how you move our countries forward. More importantly, that’s how you create an environment where you might encourage others to collaborate,” Glover, 49, the mission pilot, said.

NASA has just pulled off a deep space first that could forever change the way we communicate beyond Earth. A silent beam of light traveled an unimaginable distance—and then something remarkable happened. In a major step toward high-speed space internet, NASA has successfully exchanged laser-encoded messages with a spacecraft over 350 million kilometers from Earth. The story, reported by IFLScience, marks the success of one of the most ambitious space communication tests ever attempted—and may open the door to a future where humans on Mars send back livestreams in real time.... To carry out this experiment, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory...

The tenth flight test of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Monday, August 25. The launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. CT. The primary test objectives for the booster will be focused on its landing burn and will use unique engine configurations. One of the three center engines used for the final phase of landing will be intentionally disabled to gather data on the ability for a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn. The booster will then transition to only two center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a...

07/01/2025 61.0 km/s =136,560.54 mph 07/04/2025. 61.4 km/s = 137,385.81 mph | Perihelion: 29 Oct 2025 11:29 UTC [-117d 6h 35m 35s] 07/10/2025 61.5 km/s = 137,607.07 mph | Perihelion: 29 Oct 2025 11:29 UTC [-111d 9h 14m 49s] 07/31/2025. 62.2 km/s =139,172.08 mph | Perihelion: 29 Oct 2025 11:29 UTC [-89d 16h 35m 51s] 08/03/2025 . 62.3 km/s = 139,361.08 mph. | 08/05/2025 . 62.4 km/s = 139,582.44 mph | 08/15/2025 . 62.9 km/s = 140,569.70 mph | Perihelion: 29 Oct 2025 11:29 UTC [-74d 20h 25m 14s] 08/16/2025 . 63.0 km/s = 140,790.96 mph | 08/19/2025. 63.1 km/s...