Space

I’ve got three telescopes in my home, but the Celestron FirstScope is my first stop when it comes to stargazing. Now this super-portable, beginner-friendly tabletop scope is $60 at Amazon, even cheaper than Prime Day! Save 20% on this moon-themed Celestron Firstscope at Amazon What makes the Celestron FirstScope so fantastic? It’s all down to ease of use and portability.

NASA’s long-distance spacecraft-calling network just got a boost. The Deep Space Network (DSN), best known for communicating with distant spacecraft such as Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons, added a 114-foot (34-meter) radio-frequency antenna in California, boosting capacity on the increasingly crowded network. More than 40 spacecraft exploring the solar system and interstellar space…

Nearby Earth, an iconic series of orbiting U.S. government satellites called Landsat have collectively been charting minerals and climate change for more than 50 years. What if we can do the same thing in space? A new NASA early-stage project, whimsically named “Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys”, aims to bring “Landsat-style mineral intelligence” to other worlds…

Astronomers have witnessed a small, icy body that orbits the sun out beyond Jupiter transforming into a comet, providing a missing link between comets and inert bodies called centaurs. The object in question is called 450P/LONEOS and is named after the Lowell Observatory survey that found it back in 2004. It is a centaur, which is a breed of inactive body that orbits the sun between Jupiter and…