China plans to launch an unmanned spacecraft to the moon this week to bring back lunar rocks in the first attempt by any nation to retrieve samples from Earth’s natural satellite since the 1970s. The Chang’e-5 probe, named after the ancient Chinese goddess of the moon, will seek to collect material that can help scientists
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The renowned Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico will be dismantled after 57 years of service due to the rupture of cables that have led to the threat of collapse, the US National Science Foundation announced Thursday. Two cables supporting the 900-ton instruments for the telescope above a radio dish 1,000 feet (305 metres) in diameter
NASA’s inspector general and the US justice department have launched investigations into allegations that Boeing may have benefited from internal information provided by the space agency during a contract bidding process, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The affair led to the abrupt resignation of Doug Loverro, then the head of NASA’s human exploration directorate, in
SpaceX, an American aerospace company owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has urged the Indian government to kick off approvals for satellite broadband technologies. The move is aimed at expanding SpaceX’s satellite Internet constellation Starlink to the country. SpaceX has expressed its interest in launching Starlink in India in a filing submitted with the Telecom Regulatory
Four astronauts riding a newly designed spacecraft from Elon Musk’s SpaceX docked with the International Space Station Monday night, in the first crewed mission on a privately built space capsule purchased by NASA. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience by its crew of three Americans and one Japanese astronaut, docked at 11:01pm EST (9:31am Tuesday IST), 27 hours
Four astronauts were successfully launched on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience to the International Space Station on Sunday, the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring. Three Americans, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi blasted off at 7:27pm
NASA and high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX announced on Friday a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for NASA’s first full-fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft. The liftoff time slipped from Saturday to Sunday evening due to forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida –
NASA is underestimating the amount of time and money it will take to bring Mars rocks back to Earth in the coming decade, an independent panel said Tuesday. The review board suggested that NASA and the European Space Agency consider bumping the next launches in the sample-return effort from 2026 to 2028, given all the
Three NASA crew and one Japanese astronaut are set for launch aboard a SpaceX rocket Saturday, bound for the International Space Station in the program’s first six-month routine mission since the United States resumed crewed space flight in May after nine years of reliance on Russia. NASA on Tuesday officially certified as safe the
India’s PSLV-C49 carrying its latest earth observation satellite EOS-01 and nine customer satellites lifted off from the spaceport here on Saturday. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C49/EOS-01) blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 3:12pm at the end of a 26-hour countdown. The lift off was originally scheduled for 3:02pm but
Astrophysicists have detected a burst of cosmic radio waves within our solar system for the first time and identified its source, according to research published Wednesday that sheds new light on one of the mysteries of the Universe. The origin of powerful fast radio bursts (FRBs), intense flashes of radio emission that only last a few
A NASA spacecraft tucked more than 2 pounds of asteroid samples into a capsule for return to Earth after losing some of its precious loot because of a jammed lid, scientists said Thursday. They won’t know the precise amount of the cosmic haul from asteroid Bennu, more than 200 million miles (322 million kilometres) away,
On Halloween, a rare Blue Moon will appear in the sky for the first time since 2001. A Blue Moon occurs when there is more than one full moon during a month. NASA says that it coincides with Halloween every 19 years. The Moon isn’t really blue, but will be in full bloom to make
new rogue Earth-sized plant has been discovered by scientists at University of Warsaw. This is said to be the smallest free-floating planet found up until now, and it is sized somewhere between Earth and Mars. Rogue planets are essentially not bound by any star and float freely in space. They are adrift in space after
Scientists have detected 39 gravitational-wave events that they say will further help them understand the universe, as well as explore its population of black holes and neutron stars. The latest events add to the 11 already confirmed events, taking the total number of events to 50. According to astrophysicists, this has been possible due to
A Chinese spacecraft is expected to land on Mars in May, state-run media reported on Thursday, citing a space agency official. The spacecraft, which left Earth in July, is set to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the China News Service reported, citing Liu Tongjie, spokesman for the Mars