Three years of discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope
O n this day three years ago, we witnessed the nail-biting launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful telescope humans have ever sent into space. It took 30 years to build, but in three short years of operation, JWST has already revolutionised our view of the cosmos. It’s explored …
NEOWISE’s mission to catalog objects around Earth ends
The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects – some of which could strike the Earth – ended its mission and burned on reentering the atmosphere after nearly 15 years in space. On a clear night, the sky is full of bright objects – from stars, large planets and …
100 years ago we learned the Milky Way is not the only galaxy
On Sunday November 23 1924, 100 years ago this month, readers perusing page six of the New York Times would have found an intriguing article, amid several large adverts for fur coats. The headline read: Finds Spiral Nebulae are Stellar Systems: “Dr Hubbell Confirms View That They Are ‘Island Universes’; Similar to Our Own”. The …
Missions to probe if subsurface oceans of Jupiter moons could support life
On Oct. 14, 2024, NASA launched a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s moons. Clipper will reach the ice-covered Jovian moon Europa in 2030 and spend several years collecting and sending valuable data on the moon’s potential habitability back to Earth. Clipper isn’t the only mission highlighting researchers’ interest in Jupiter and its moons. …
Psyche visit of a metal world may reveal mysteries of Earth’s interior
French novelist Jules Verne delighted 19th-century readers with the tantalizing notion that a journey to the center of the Earth was actually plausible. Since then, scientists have long acknowledged that Verne’s literary journey was only science fiction. The extreme temperatures of the Earth’s interior – around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,537 Celsius) at the core – …
Tiangong station gives China continuous presence in orbit
The International Space Station is not the only place where humans can live in orbit. On Nov. 29, 2022, the Shenzhou 15 mission launched from China’s Gobi Desert carrying three taikonauts – the Chinese word for astronauts. Six hours later, they reached their destination, China’s recently completed space station, called Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace” …
First launch of SpaceX’s Starship was a successful failure
On April 20, 2023, a new SpaceX rocket called Starship exploded over the Gulf of Mexico three minutes into its first flight ever. SpaceX is calling the test launch a success, despite the fiery end result. As a space policy expert, I agree that the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” – the term SpaceX uses when its …
ESA’s Juice lifts off to probe secrets of Jupiter’s icy moons
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 14:14 CEST on 14 April. The successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious voyage to uncover the secrets of the three ocean worlds around the giant planet Jupiter, the moons of Ganymede, Callisto and …
NASA announces Artemis II crew as rocket’s core stage completes assembly
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced the crew of four astronauts who will blast off on the historic Artemis II mission – as ‘humanity’s crew’ on humanity’s next epic journey beyond Earth orbit and around the Moon and back for the first time in more than 50 years. The history-making international flight will …
Relativity Space launches Terran 1, world’s first 3D printed rocket
The third time was finally the charm and Relativity Space finally achieved their dreams and launched their Terran 1 rocket to space on the first-ever flight of a 3D printed rocket, late Wednesday evening, Mar. 22, from Florida’s Spaceport. The first stage performed well and survived the withering aerodynamic stresses at Max-Q through stage separation, however, …