Space

It was probably always when, not if, Google would add its name to the list of companies intrigued by the potential of orbiting data centers.

Oman’s dream for a spaceport sits in a swath of desert overlooking the Arabian Sea. If all goes according to plan, three separate complexes here will launch everything from small suborbital rockets for scientific experiments to superheavy behemoths into space, bringing payloads of satellites to the stars. There will be a large mission-control building, warehouses for rocket assembly and testing, and a business park. If the spaceport succeeds, by 2027 Oman will join the small number of countries — just a dozen to date — that possess the facilities to launch objects into space.

This year is a boom time for comets. Not only did we have the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS gracing our skies (and Mars’) earlier this year, but now we have another brand new comet to look out for.

A recent study of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has detected several organic compounds that had never been recorded there before. The findings, published this month in Nature Astronomy, provide new clues about the interior chemical composition of this icy world, as well as new hope that it could harbor life.

the Earth you walk on today might not be the same planet that was born 4.5 billion years ago. Many scientists believe that in its infancy, Earth collided with another world the size of Mars, and that instead of being destroyed, it was transformed, incorporating the mass of that foreign body to become the planet we know. Recent research adds another layer of relevance to that hypothesized cosmic event: Scientists believe that without that other body, the basic conditions for life to emerge on Earth might never have appeared.

Your favorite exosolar system and mine -- TRAPPIST-1 -- has long been known to have a few plants in its Goldilocks zone where water can exist in liquid form. New analysis of data from the JWST's scan of planet TRAPPIST-1e now shows that in addition to surface water (in the form of liquid water or ice), it also has some form of atmosphere, increasing the chances that it could possibly harbor life.

Now we just need to find plausible evidence that there might be important natural resources so we can gear up a squad of space miners/marines.

paywall bypass: https://archive.is/N7m24

Supergiant Betelgeuse was recently discovered to have a companion star - it's bright blue, not yet fusing hydrogen, and actually orbiting so close that it's inside Betelgeuse's outer atmosphere! I wonder what it'll be named.

When Reaction Engines went bankrupt a few years ago there was much speculation about when -- not if -- their technology for a supercooled hybrid ramjet/rocket engine would be picked up by another entity. It seems we now have our answer as the ESA hopes to revive and complete the ambitious project for a single-stage-to-orbit, air-breathing spaceplane.

Matter and antimatter are like mirror opposites: they are the same in every respect except for their electric charge. Well, almost the same—very occasionally, matter and antimatter behave differently from each other, and when they do, physicists get very excited. Now scientists at the world’s largest particle collider have observed a new class of antimatter particles breaking down at a different rate than their matter counterparts. The discovery is a significant step in physicists’ quest to solve one of the biggest mysteries in the universe: why there is something rather than nothing.

The Carina Nebula, by ESA’s Herschel space observatory. The image shows the effects of massive star formation – powerful stellar winds and radiation have carved pillars and bubbles in dense clouds of gas and dust.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is showing off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this peculiar planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras are also revealing the ice giant in a whole new light.

If you took a straw poll of the general public, chances are that few people would have any idea what space weather is, if they’ve ever heard the term at all. In contrast to terrestrial weather, space weather cannot be felt. It doesn’t warm your skin, drench your clothes or blow down your fence. Unlike the floods, droughts and hurricanes that have beset human civilizations since ancient times, it is not an age-old threat. For the first 10,000 years of human civilization, the sun’s flares and CMEs would have had no impact on life at all.

Webb’s infrared image highlights the planet’s dramatic rings and dynamic atmosphere. Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.

With giant storms, powerful winds, aurorae, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.

This is one of a series of images taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 8 January 2025 as the spacecraft sped by for its sixth and final gravity assist manoeuvre at the planet. Flying over Mercury's north pole gave the spacecraft's monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM 1) a unique opportunity to peer down into the shadowy polar craters.

A little less than four years from now, a killer asteroid will narrowly fly past planet Earth. This will be a celestial event visible around the world—for a few weeks, Apophis will shine among the brightest objects in the night sky.

A powerful new observatory has unveiled its first images to the public, showing off what it can do as it gets ready to start its main mission: making a vivid time-lapse video of the night sky that will let astronomers study all the cosmic events that occur over ten years.

This dramatic view of the crescents of Neptune and Triton was acquired by Voyager 2 approximately 3 days, 6 and one-half hours after its closest approach to Neptune north is to the right.

A powerful new observatory has unveiled its first images to the public, showing off what it can do as it gets ready to start its main mission: making a vivid time-lapse video of the night sky that will let astronomers study all the cosmic events that occur over ten years.

Voyager 1 image of Saturn and its ring taken Nov. 16, 1980 four days after closest approach to Saturn, from a distance of 5,300, 000 km (3,300,000 miles). This viewing geometry, which shows Saturn as a crescent, is never achieved from Earth. The Saturnian rings, like the cloud tops of Saturn itself, are visible because they reflect sunlight. The translucent nature of the rings is apparent where Saturn can be seen through parts of the rings. Other parts of the rings are so dense with orbiting ice particles that almost no sunlight shines through them and a shadow is cast onto the yellowish cloud tops of Saturn, which in turn, casts a shadow across the rings at right. The black strip within the rings is the Cassini Division, which contains much less orbiting ring material than elsewhere in the rings.

Asteroid Didymos (bottom left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft. The image was taken by the on board DRACO imager from a distance of 570 miles (920 kilometers). This image was the last to contain a complete view of both asteroids. Didymos is roughly 2,500 feet (780 meters) in diameter; Dimorphos is about 525 feet (160 meters) in length. Ecliptic north is toward the bottom of the image. This image is shown as it appears on the DRACO detector and is mirror flipped across the x-axis from reality.

Daphnis, a small moon of Saturn, orbits within the Keeler Gap and exerts a noticeable gravitational pull on Saturn’s rings. This effect creates striking wave-like patterns along the ring edges, offering a visual glimpse into gravitational interactions in planetary systems.

Observations of our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, made using ESA’s Flyeye telescope.

ESA’s Gaia data release 3 shows us the speed at which more than 30 million objects in the Milky Way (mostly stars) move towards or away from us. This is called ‘radial velocity’. We can now see how the objects move over a large portion of the Milky Way’s disc.

The eye is first drawn, in this new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month, to the central mega-monster that is galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This behemoth collection of galaxies, lying 4.5 billion light-years from Earth in the constellation Grus (the Crane), dominates the scene. Looking more closely, this dense collection of heavy galaxies is surrounded by glowing streaks of light, and these warped arcs are the true object of scientists’ interest: faint galaxies from the Universe’s distant past.

The smooth topped, rounded flows seen extending from the base of the crater wall are ‘debris aprons’: remnants of rock-covered glaciers that likely formed when the martian climate allowed ice to accumulate at the mid-latitudes of Mars. Over time, the debris-covered glaciers slowly crept downslope to form the gently sloping bulges seen today.

Photographing the Milky Way is a journey through time, space, and imagination.

Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a supernova remnant located about 11 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It spans approximately 10 light-years. This image, released in April 2023, uses data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to reveal Cas A in a new light.

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionised, captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).

A beautiful but skewed spiral galaxy dazzles in today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy, called Arp 184 or NGC 1961, sits about 190 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Telescopes, including Hubble, have monitored the Eta Carinae star system for more than two decades. It has been prone to violent outbursts, including an episode in the 1840s during which ejected material formed the bipolar bubbles seen here.

[Image Description: An area of deep space with thousands of galaxies in various shapes and sizes on a black background. Most are circles or ovals, with a few spirals. More distant galaxies are redder in colour and smaller, down to being mere dots, while closer galaxies are a bit larger and white or blueish. A few gold-coloured galaxies are bunched closely together in the centre. Bright stars surrounded by spikes lie in our galaxy.]

ESA’s state-of-the-art Biomass satellite has launched aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 29 April 2025 at 11:15 CEST (06:15 local time).

This animation shows how Solar Orbiter obtains its high-resolution full Sun views. While both the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) and Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instruments on the spacecraft are capable of imaging the entire Sun in a single shot, their high-resolution cameras only cover a small patch of the Sun at any one time.