Space

Over the past two years, 218-year-old publisher Wiley has repositioned itself in the AI landscape, focusing on specialized “vertical” models over general chatbots. Explaining the company’s proactive strategy, SVP Josh Jarrett stated Wiley’s view is “we learn more by doing and potentially help shape AI’s development, rather than just be shaped by it.” This approach…

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is in the process of undergoing critical environmental testing at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. After its arrival on March 18, 2025, IMAP was moved into the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) on March 19, where it began a 28-day thermal vacuum test to simulate…

Matteo Paz, a Pasadena High School senior whose interest in astronomy was sparked by Caltech public lectures, used AI to develop a computational model while participating in Caltech’s Summer Research Connection outreach program. Under the mentorship of IPAC astronomer Davy Kirkpatrick, Paz analyzed over a decade’s worth of NASA’s NEOWISE infrared survey data. While the…

Berkeley Lab’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has released a dataset mapping a whopping 18.7 million celestial objects. The dataset is the largest 3D cosmic survey ever made available to the scientific community. This astronomical treasure trove, containing information on roughly million stars, 13.1 million galaxies, and 1.6 million quasars. The newly released 270-terabyte dataset…

A major question in cosmology is how the first galaxies released enough high-energy radiation to ionize the neutral universe after the Big Bang. Now, advanced analysis of X-ray data from the starburst galaxy Haro 11 sheds light on how galaxies contribute to cosmic reionization. Using principal component analysis (PCA) on observations from Chandra and XMM-Newton,…

Tapping more than a decade of Hubble Space Telescope observations, astronomers have determined Uranus’s rotation period with ultra-high accuracy — roughly 1,000 times greater than previous estimates — by tracking the planet’s unique ultraviolet aurorae. This new measurement refines the Uranian day to 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 52 seconds, establishing a vital baseline for…

Humanity’s return to the Moon, and eventual journeys to Mars, hinge on our ability to build reliable, permanent structures. Think habitats, landing pads, power stations and the like. But transporting fully assembled structures from Earth is prohibitively expensive and complex. The logical alternative is in-situ assembly, and a fundamental process for joining metal components is…

Blue Origin broke into the military’s most critical space launch market Friday, securing a multi-billion dollar share alongside SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in new U.S. Space Force contracts worth up to $13.7 billion designed to ensure access to orbit for national security missions through 2032. The contract awards are a significant expansion of the…

Recent accounts from NASA veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams reveal that their Boeing Starliner spacecraft experienced multiple, cascading thruster failures during its June 2024 docking attempt with the International Space Station (ISS). The problems brought the mission close to catastrophe and forced NASA to make a critical flight-rule waiver decision. This latest setback occurred…

The dedicated YouTube channel for the Hubble Space Telescope, launched by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in 2007, has abruptly disappeared, leaving astronomy enthusiasts and educators searching for answers. The channel’s removal appears to stem from either NASA budget constraints, organizational streamlining efforts, or a combination of both. While NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget…

For decades, cosmologists have treated dark energy, an elusive force driving the universe’s accelerated expansion, as a constant, static entity, represented by Einstein’s cosmological constant (Λ). New findings, however, now challenge this assumption. Multiple analyses, including data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), suggest dark energy’s influence may have changed over cosmic time. The…

On Friday, NASA celebrated the successful launch of its SpaceX Crew-10 mission, the tenth crew rotation flight to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a partnership with SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS via SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX confirmed the…

One might assume that galaxies in our universe would have no favored spin, rotating randomly either clockwise or counterclockwise. Yet a recent discovery from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) challenges this fundamental notion. JWST’s Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) analyzed 263 galaxies from the early universe and revealed a significant asymmetry: roughly 66% spin…

Water appears to have emerged far earlier than once thought—less than 200 million years after the Big Bang—according to research in Nature Astronomy. Using advanced 3D simulations, scientists discovered that the first supernovae produced oxygen, which rapidly bonded with hydrogen to form water, permeating early galaxies. “Besides revealing that a primary ingredient for life was…

China National Space Administration’s (CNSA’s) Tianwen-2 is set to launch on a Long March 3B rocket in May 2025 as part of China’s  deep-space ambitions. The craft follows the success of the prior craft in the Tianwen line, the Tianwen-1 at Mars. The Tianwen-2 mission will tap solar electric propulsion to explore two celestial bodies:…

The Boeing X‑37B Orbital Test Vehicle—a highly secretive, unmanned and reusable spaceplane from the United States Space Force—made an appearance today in an official photo circulating on social media. This image, captured via an onboard camera typically used for vehicle health monitoring during its seventh mission (OTV‑7), offers a glimpse of Earth from the X‑37B’s…

[Updated on February 21] NASA has revised the impact probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 to 0.36% (about a 1-in-278 chance) as of February 21, 2025. This figure is based on the latest observations in NASA’s Sentry system, which automatically monitors near-Earth objects for potential collisions over the next 100 years. The asteroid, estimated at 40–90…

When cell phones first became ubiquitous, they allowed people to call from previously inconceivable places — the park, the swimming pool, the car, and everywhere else — but calling on the Moon? That remained firmly in the realm of sci-fi fantasy… until now. Because while you were busy doomscrolling, something truly astronomical was happening. Nokia…

As a result of the escalating threat of asteroid impacts to Earth, China has launched its planetary defense unit, recruiting specialists to advance asteroid monitoring, early warning, and potential deflection strategies. China’s immediate concern is the newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4, measuring roughly the size of a football field. The threat of 2024 YR4 The…

A year ago, NASA quietly released one of the most captivating astrophysical simulations ever produced: a mind-bending visual journey into the swirling depths of a supermassive black hole. Although published in May 2024, the immersive 360° visualization has inexplicably resurfaced on social media sites ranging from Instagram to Reddit and is now racking hundreds of…

Scientists at Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom have reported developing a plasma engine for deep space travel. They announced that they have already built a laboratory prototype of the craft. This engine uses electrically accelerated plasma (ionized gas) instead of chemical combustion, enabling considerable exhaust velocities. The scientists estimate that they could send a spacecraft…