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The Pentagon’s emerging secret space defense programs are being developed in large part to counter a rising threat to U.S. orbital assets from both Russia and China, though the latter poses the more significant risk, according to Defense Department officials. Writing at Forbes, senior aerospace and defense contributor Loren Thompson reported that a recent briefing to Trump Cabinet members by a top Air Force commander was highly classified and covered threats to American space-based military and civilian assets posed by Moscow and Beijing, both of whom are building counter-space capabilities aimed at blinding the U.S. military in a conflict and...

**SNIP** Like many of his fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Yang has proposed using a wide range of tools to ramp up renewable energy, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, establish new standards on emissions for buildings, cars and the entire electric grid and boost nuclear energy capacity. However, his 20-year, $4.87 trillion climate plan differs in one way and that’s in terms of geoengineering - the notion that humans should take deliberate and large-scale action concerning climate in order to stop or slow down the planet’s warming. Yang’s plan would provide $800 million to NASA, the Department of Defense and the...

President Donald Trump announced Thursday the official establishment of the US military's Space Command. "Those who wish to harm the United States, to seek to challenge us on the ultimate high ground of space, it's going to be a whole different ballgame," Trump said at a White House ceremony marking the command's establishment. Space Command will become the 11th combatant command, joining the ranks of US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, and US Special Operations Command, which oversees Special Operations Forces.

The Trump administration Opens a New Window. is set to launch the U.S. Space Command on Thursday, a key step as military Opens a New Window. officials work to establish a proposed sixth branch of the military known as the Space Force. U.S. Air Force Gen. John Raymond will serve as the first head of Space Command (SPACECOM). At launch, Raymond will lead 87 active units handling operations such as missile warning, satellite surveillance, space control and space support, Gen. Joseph Dunford said at a meeting of the National Space Council earlier this month. "The United States Space Force will...

Update for Aug. 24: Astronaut Anne McClain has issued a statement refuting the claims of her estranged spouse. Read the full story here.The closely-guarded private life of a NASA astronaut burst into the spotlight in a New York Times report Friday (Aug. 23) on a messy divorce battle involving American astronaut Anne McClain that has apparently led to claims of identity theft against the space flyer. The incident is rooted in a bitter separation with McClain's spouse, Summer Worden, the Times report continued. According to Worden, her bank account was accessed without her permission from a NASA-affiliated computer network, prompting...

...NASA astronaut Anne McClain has denied she stole her estranged wife’s identity while on a mission as officials investigate her for what may be the first crime committed in space.... McClain’s legal drama made headlines Friday after her wife, Summer Worden, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, claiming the astronaut illegally accessed her bank account during a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, the New York Times reported. The pair has been locked in a bitter divorce since 2018 as they feud over custody of Worden’s 6-year-old son....

America recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. That event served to establish America’s preeminence in the space frontier and to declare to the world that, according to President John F. Kennedy, “This new ocean will be a sea of peace” instead of a “terrifying theater of war.” As we look back on this event with pride, we should also confront the fact that today our preeminence in space is quickly becoming science fiction. Having ceded the edge in rocket development years ago, the U.S. is now on track to compromise its preeminence in space even further with...

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Chantilly, Virginia 9:59 A.M. EDT THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Dr. Stofan. Thank you for that kind introduction. And thank you for your tremendous stewardship and your tremendous leadership. Would you join me in thanking Dr. Ellen Stofan for her outstanding leadership? (Applause.) To all of the members of the National Space Council, to our User Advisory Group — all of whom very quietly came onstage — I think they all deserve a big round of applause. These are extraordinary Americans that are making a difference for American leadership in space. (Applause.) Would you join...

Scientists, including from The Australian National University (ANU), say they have detected a black hole swallowing a neutron star for the first time. Neutron stars and black holes are the super-dense remains of dead stars. On Wednesday 14 August 2019, gravitational-wave discovery machines in the United States and Italy detected ripples in space and time from a cataclysmic event that happened about 8,550 million trillion kilometres away from Earth.

Beresheet was a robotic lander. Though it didn't transport astronauts, it carried human DNA samples, along with the aforementioned tardigrades and 30 million very small digitized pages of information about human society and culture. However, it's unknown if the archive — and the water bears — survived the explosive impact when Beresheet crashed The tardigrades and the human DNA were late additions to the mission, added just a few weeks before Beresheet launched on Feb. 21. Much like Cretaceous fossils locked in amber, the DNA samples and tardigrades were sealed in a resin layer protecting the DVD-size lunar library, while...

Think of the X-37B as the Space Shuttle’s smaller, younger brother and you wouldn’t be wrong. With its bullet-like shape, stubby wings, and two tone black and white appearance, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle looks like a smaller, cuter version of the manned orbiter that served NASA for decades. That’s where the comparison ends though: property of the U.S. Air Force, the secretive, unmanned X-37B is built to spend months in orbit, carrying out classified missions on behalf of America’s military space program.

The Air Force's top-secret X-37B Space Plane that appears to be the prototype for the world’s first stealth outer spacefighter just set a new record of 700-days in orbit. The X-37 is called the “mini-shuttle” because it is about 29 feet long, has a 15-foot wingspan, weighs just 11,000 pounds and there have been five Earth orbit missions since 1999 at altitudes between 200 and 250 miles. The current two reusable X-37B’s look like scale-models military “spacefighter,” but are officially designated as robotic “temporary satellites” to avoid violating the Outer Space Treaty that forbids weapons platforms at altitudes over 62...

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...