Space

A history-making robotic rescue mission scheduled to launch next year will fly on a rocket dropped from a plane. In September, NASA announced that it has chosen Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the altitude of its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a space telescope whose orbit has gotten dangerously low since its November 2004 launch. Today (Nov. 19), we learned how…

Flagship European space science missions conducted in collaboration with NASA face a possible combined funding shortfall of nearly $2 billion due to budget cuts put forward by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The European Space Agency hopes its member states will come to the rescue. Representatives of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) 23 member states are set to meet at the…

Dutch astrophotographer Cornelis van Zuilen combined 35 hours of telescopic data to create an incandescent view of the Eastern Veil Nebula shining 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Van Zuilen’s nebula image reveals breathtaking detail in these swirling clouds of interstellar dust and gas, which were cast out into space when a star 20 times more massive than the sun…

For the first time in more than five years, humanity has launched a mission to Mars — but it won’t be arriving at the Red Planet anytime soon. NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes launched Thursday (Nov. 13) on the second-ever flight of Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket. It was the first Mars liftoff since July 30, 2020, when NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity…