Category Archives: Space

The Trump-Musk feud shows danger of handing the keys of power to one person

Posted on by

A billionaire’s vendetta has threatened to cut off the US from the ISS and complicate national defense

After a year of effusive praise and expressions of love for each other, Elon Musk and Donald Trump exploded their political partnership in dramatic fashion this week. The highly public split included, among other highlights, the world’s richest person accusing the president of the United States of associating with a notorious sex offender. Trump said Musk had “lost his mind”.

As Musk and Trump traded insults, each on his own social network, they also issued threats with tangible consequences. Trump suggested that he could cancel all of Musk’s government contracts and subsidies – “the best way to save money”, he posted – a move that would have devastating consequences not only on the tech billionaire’s companies but also on the federal agencies that have come to depend on them. Musk responded by announcing that he would begin decommissioning the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that Nasa relies on for transport missions, although he later reversed the decision.

Continue reading...

Second attempt by Japanese company to land on moon likely ends in failure

Posted on by

Resilience would have made history as the first non-US commercial lander to make a successful touchdown

An attempt to land a commercially built spacecraft on the surface of the moon looked to have ended in failure on Thursday, two years after its predecessor, launched by the same Japanese company, crashed following an uncontrolled descent.

Resilience, an un-crewed vehicle from the Tokyo company ispace, would have made history as the first non-US commercial lander to make a successful touchdown, scheduled for 3.17pm ET Thursday (4.17am JST Friday) at Mare Frigoris (the Sea of Cold) in the far north of the moon.

Continue reading...

Starwatch: Venus will be unmistakably brilliant in the predawn sky this week

Posted on by

The planet will reach its maximum western elongation from the sun, making it visible in the early hours

Venus will reach maximum western elongation from the sun on 31 May. Maximum elongation means that it appears as far from the sun as it can, making it the most easily visible. The fact that it is to the sun’s west means that it is visible in the morning sky.

From the UK, Venus rises at about 03.15 BST, giving an observing window of about an hour from 03.30 BST. The sun rises at about 04.45 BST, and no observations should be undertaken once the sun is in the sky because permanent eye damage can occur from looking at its fiery surface.

Continue reading...

Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader

Posted on by

Gen Michael Guetlein of Space Force will be in charge of defense system that could cost $540bn over 20 years

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.

Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.

Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s company town: SpaceX employees vote to create ‘Starbase’

Posted on by

Residents – most of them SpaceX workers – in remote Texas community approve plan to create new city

Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted on Saturday to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches.

A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica decided to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that will grant them the authority to pass city ordinances.

Continue reading...

Soviet-era spacecraft expected to plunge uncontrolled to Earth next week

Posted on by

Kosmos 482, weighing 500kg, was meant to land on Venus in the 1970s but it never made it out of orbit because of a rocket malfunction

A Soviet-era spacecraft meant to land on Venus in the 1970s is expected to soon plunge uncontrolled back to Earth.

It’s too early to know where the half-ton mass of metal might come down or how much of it will survive re-entry, according to space debris-tracking experts.

Continue reading...

Scientists hail ‘strongest evidence’ so far for life beyond our solar system

Posted on by

Astrophysics team say observation of chemical compounds may be ‘tipping point’ in search for extraterrestrial life

A giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim.

Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet called K2-18 b appear to reveal the chemical fingerprints of two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to be produced by life.

Continue reading...

Celebrities criticize all-female rocket launch: ‘This is beyond parody’

Posted on by

Amy Schumer, Olivia Wilde and Olivia Munn are among the famous names calling out the much-publicised space trip

The all-female Blue Origin rocket launch may have received plenty of glowing media coverage – but not everyone is impressed.

The stunt has drawn criticism from a number of female celebrities who were not keen on the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin NS-31 mission, which included Katy Perry, Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn and, in a twist straight out of Apple TV’s The Morning Show, CBS Mornings host Gayle King.

Continue reading...

Blue Origin crew including Katy Perry safely returns to Earth after space flight

Posted on by

All-female crew led by Jeff Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sánchez lands in Texas after reaching the edge of outer space

Six women – including the pop star Katy Perry and morning TV host Gayle King – safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space and back from a private Texas ranch on Monday morning on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and commercial space flight entrepreneur.

The women, who also included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, made the trip to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized boundary of space – to float about, weightlessly, in the rocket’s capsule for three minutes before returning to Earth.

Continue reading...

Documents reveal Trump’s plan to gut funding for Nasa and climate science

Posted on by

Critics say Nasa faces ‘extinction-level event’ with budget plan, with climate research funding also to be slashed

Donald Trump shows no signs of easing his assault on climate science as plans of more sweeping cuts to key US research centers surfaced on Friday.

The administration is planning to slash budgets at both the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), according to internal budget documents, taking aim specifically at programs used to study impacts from the climate crisis.

Continue reading...

Space probe to map carbon content of world’s remotest tropical forests

Posted on by

Revolutionary scanner to be fired into Earth orbit this month to measure effects of deforestation

Scientists are about to take part in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world’s remotest, densest and darkest tropical forests – from outer space. The feat will be achieved using a special radar scanner that has been fitted to a probe, named Biomass, that will be fired into the Earth’s orbit later this month.

For the next five years, the 1.25-tonne spacecraft will sweep over the tropical rainforests of Africa, Asia and South America and peer through their dense 40m-high ­canopies to study the vegetation that lies beneath. The data collected by Biomass will then be used to create unique 3D maps of forests normally hidden from human sight.

Continue reading...

‘We weren’t stuck’: Nasa astronauts tell of space odyssey and reject claims of neglect

Posted on by

Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams’ story markedly at odds with abandonment narrative painted by Trump and Musk

In the end, whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump liked to insist, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were never stuck, nor stranded in space, and definitely not abandoned or marooned.

The world heard on Monday, for the first time since their return to Earth two weeks ago, from the two Nasa astronauts whose 10-day flight to the international space station (ISS) last summer turned into a nine-month odyssey. And their story was markedly at odds with the narrative painted from the White House.

Continue reading...

First orbital rocket launched from mainland Europe crashes after takeoff

Posted on by

Uncrewed Spectrum test rocket’s failure seconds after blast-off said to have produced extensive data nonetheless

A test rocket intended to kickstart satellite launches from Europe fell to the ground and exploded less than a minute after takeoff from Norway on Sunday, in what the German startup Isar Aerospace had described as an initial test.

The Spectrum started smoking from its sides and crashed back to Earth in a powerful explosion just after its launch from from the Andøya spaceport in the Arctic. Images were broadcast live on YouTube.

Continue reading...

Skygazers gather across northern hemisphere to glimpse partial solar eclipse

Posted on by

Eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of UK between about 10am and noon

People across the northern hemisphere have gathered to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse.

The eclipse peaked in London at about 11am on Saturday and was visible in parts of the UK between about 10am and noon.

Continue reading...

Partial solar eclipse: moon blocks part of sun for people in northern hemisphere – as it happened

Posted on by

This blog is now closed, you can read our story here

Here’s a view of the sun from Dakar, Senegal:

How visible today’s partial eclipse will be depends, unsurprisingly, on how clear the sky is where you are.

Continue reading...

Europe’s first Mars rover will have UK-built lander

Posted on by

Airbus also built the Rosalind Franklin rover, due to launch in 2028 to search for signs of past life

Europe’s first rover to be sent to another planet is back on track to reach Mars, with the lander that will deposit it on the surface lined up to be built in the UK.

The Rosalind Franklin rover – named after the scientist who played a key role in the discovery of the structure of DNA – is part of ExoMars, a European Space Agency (Esa) mission to probe whether life once existed on the red planet, and features a drill to retrieve samples, up to 4bn years old, from two metres below the surface.

Continue reading...

Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon

Posted on by

Promise was central plank to space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027

Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, in response to Donald Trump’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at federal agencies.

The promise was a central plank of the space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027 for the first time since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.

Continue reading...

Scientists hail ‘avalanche of discoveries’ from Euclid space telescope

Posted on by

Data from European Space Agency’s mission has allowed researchers to create detailed catalogue of 380,000 galaxies

Astronomers are predicting an “avalanche of discoveries” after the first major release of observations from a European space telescope built to study the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that comprise the bulk of the universe.

The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission has captured images of 26m galaxies, covering 10bn years of cosmic history. They give researchers unprecedented insight into the forces that shape the cosmos and the galaxies it holds.

Continue reading...

‘Great to see our friends arrive’: SpaceX capsule docks with ISS to bring back stranded Nasa astronauts

Posted on by

The arrival of four astronauts will allow Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to return to Earth after nine months on the International Space Station

There were emotional scenes of smiling astronauts hugging and embracing in zero gravity on the International Space Station on Sunday after a replacement crew docked with the orbital outpost – a step towards the return home of two astronauts who have been stranded for more than nine months.

A SpaceX capsule delivered four astronauts to the ISS in a Nasa crew-swap mission that will allow the pair of stuck astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, to return home after nine months on the orbiting lab.

Continue reading...

Rocket blasts off to bring stranded US astronauts home from the ISS at long last

Posted on by

Launched by Nasa and SpaceX, the Falcon 9 is picking up Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose eight days on board the International Space Station became nine months

A long-awaited mission to return stranded US astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station has been launched by Nasa and SpaceX.

The pair were due to spend eight days on the ISS in June, but technical problems with the experimental spacecraft that took them there have left them stuck on the orbital laboratory for nine months.

Continue reading...