Science

Weeks after Moscow forced the 11th-hour cancellation of a rocket launch for British satellite venture OneWeb from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the company said on Monday it has contracted with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send its satellites into orbit. Terms of the deal with California-based SpaceX, a direct competitor of OneWeb in the burgeoning broadband

In a major milestone for astronomy, NASA has confirmed the existence of a massive 5,000 planets beyond our own solar system. Not so long ago, we only knew a handful of planets that revolved around our Sun, but the quest to know the world beyond always continued. NASA has now added a fresh batch of

Blue Origin engineer Gary Lai will replace “Saturday Night Live” comic Pete Davidson in the space tourism company’s latest flight, it said on Monday. Davidson had pulled out after the flight, originally meant to launch this week, was postponed to March 29 to run some more pre-flight tests on one of the vehicle’s subsystems. The

NASA has shared a stunning image of a “cosmic flower in bloom” on Instagram. The photograph showed a heavenly entity resembling a flower in the Ring Nebula, which is located about 2,000 light-years away from us, in the constellation Lyra. The image, which showed a halo around the planetary nebula appearing like floral petals, was

Scientists have detected a mysterious radio signal emanating from our galaxy, Milky Way, that has left them baffled. They say the signal is so rare that only one other of its kind has ever been identified. They feel the signal could be coming out of a white dwarf pulsar. A pulsar is a rotating neutron

NASA has shared an image of what astronomers say is the first observation of a giant debris cloud formed by a massive collision of celestial bodies. Astronomers observed the cloud as it passed in front of its star and briefly blocked its light. Astronomers have long found evidence of collision among celestial bodies. But those

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket for a record-breaking 12th time on Saturday (March 19), and then returned to Earth for yet another successful touchdown. The Falcon 9 was launched into low-Earth orbit from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:24am ET on March 19 (9:54am IST), carrying 53 of SpaceX’s Starlink Internet

Russia will start work on its own Mars mission given that the European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended a joint project in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, Interfax news agency quoted a top official as saying on Friday. The ESA announced on Thursday that it would be impossible to continue cooperating with Russia on

Three Russian cosmonauts blasted off to the International Space Station Friday, as Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine brought the Kremlin’s relations with the West to their lowest point since the Soviet era. Russian space veteran Oleg Artemyev and rookies Denis Matveyev and Sergei Korsakov set off at 3:55pm GMT (9:25pm IST), a NASA live feed

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space tourism service has postponed until March 29 a flight initially set for next week, while Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson will not be a passenger on the launch, the company said on Thursday. The company, in a brief notice first posted on Twitter, gave no immediate explanation for the

NASA’s massive new rocket began its first journey to a launchpad on Thursday ahead of a battery of tests that will clear it to blast off to the Moon this summer. It left the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building around 5:47pm ET (21:47 GMT) and began an 11-hour journey on a crawler-transporter to the

Eugene Parker, a pioneering American astrophysicist whose mathematical prediction that charged particles streamed from stars in a solar wind was met with disbelief before he was ultimately vindicated, has died aged 94, NASA said on Wednesday. Parker was hailed as a visionary who laid the groundwork for the field of heliophysics, the science of understanding the

NASA’s next-generation moon rocket was due on Thursday to make a highly anticipated, slow-motion journey from an assembly plant to its launch pad in Florida for a final round of tests in the coming weeks that will determine how soon the spacecraft can fly. Rollout of the towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been aligned to produce the first unified image of a single star, reaching a critical milestone in its journey to unravel the mysteries of the world far beyond our reach. Most traditional telescopes have a single primary mirror that collects light from distant stars. But Webb has 18 hexagonal

An Indian-American astronaut and one of his colleagues have conducted a spacewalk to work on the International Space Station (ISS), whose services have been extended till 2030. Raja Chari, the commander of the SpaceX crew currently docked at the ISS, and flight engineer Kayla Barron walked out of the safety of the space station’s airlock

NASA has insisted tensions linked to the war in Ukraine had no impact on International Space Station operations or the planned return of an American astronaut aboard a Russian capsule later this month. Mark Vande Hei is due to fly to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov

NASA is set to roll out its Space Launch System (SLS), which will take humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, into the public view for the first time on Thursday. The system has been under development for over a decade and is beset by delays and mounting costs. However, the agency hopes once it

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has captured an explosion occurring at the Cartwheel galaxy. The supernova, dubbed as SN2021afdx, has been identified as a Type II supernova. This type of supernova is formed when a large star runs out of the fuel that is required to keep the star from collapsing under its own gravity.

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Sunday the US electric carmaker and his rocket company SpaceX are facing significant inflationary pressure in raw materials and logistics. Musk in a tweet also asked about inflation rate outlook and said his companies “are not alone”, retweeting an article saying the Ukraine–Russia conflict sent commodity prices

An asteroid, around 3-metre wide, hit the Earth’s atmosphere on March 11, just two hours before it was discovered by a Hungarian astronomer. The object, now designated 2022 EB5, impacted the planet north of Iceland. The 2022 EB5 was only the fifth asteroid to be discovered before it struck the planet. The first four were

A team of physicists may have solved the mystery surrounding the matter that is swallowed by black holes. These physicists considered wormholes — theoretical tunnels with two ends at separate points in spacetime — to explain the long-held mystery. Black holes are regions in space through which no matter can pass. The gravity of a

North Korea’s latest launches appear aimed at developing and testing technology that can be used both for spy satellites and in a massive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of launching multiple nuclear warheads, analysts said. North Korea deployed a new ICBM system in February 27 and March 5 test-firings, the US and South Korean officials

A Los Angeles-area startup founded by a veteran spaceflight robotics engineer unveiled on Thursday its full-scale, working prototype for a next-generation lunar rover that is just as fast as NASA’s old “moon buggy” but is designed to do much more. The company, Venturi Astrolab, released photos and video showing its Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX)

On January 7, space scientists in Europe discovered a large asteroid that appeared to be on a collision course with Earth. They calculated that the 230-feet-wide asteroid, named 2022 AE1, was set to hit Earth on July 4, 2023. The time they had to deflect its path was too narrow to actually mount a response,

If something is close to our view, we tend to lose perspective. To have a clear picture, we need to create distance between ourselves and the view. Astronomers know the importance of visual separation far better than anyone else since they keep looking at the vastness of the Universe most of the time. But they

North Korea will launch a number of reconnaissance satellites in coming years to provide real-time information on military actions by the US and its allies, state media on Thursday reported leader Kim Jong Un as saying. While inspecting North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration, Kim said “a lot” of military reconnaissance satellites would be put

More than 70 original NASA photographs including a celebrated image of Buzz Aldrin’s moon walk taken by Neil Armstrong were sold at auction in Copenhagen on Wednesday for more than EUR 155,000 (roughly Rs. 1.3 crore). The Aldrin image, which fetched EUR 5,373 (roughly Rs. 4,52,000), shows the astronaut on the surface of the moon

SpaceX will delay the maiden flight of Starship, the spaceship designed to transport humans to Moon and Mars, as it is switching priorities to cyber defence and overcoming signal jamming, CEO Elon Musk said. The tech billionaire did not say what or who was causing these attacks on SpaceX. But Musk and his SpaceX-operated Starlink

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has declared that it will suspend the country’s “observer” status at its facilities and freeze new agreements with Russian scientific institutes. The 23 member states of CERN resolved to discontinue all collaboration with Russia at a meeting of the CERN Council, following a

The first NASA photographs taken on the Moon, including the first shot of an “Earthrise” and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface, will be auctioned off in Copenhagen on Wednesday. “One of my favourite photos from this fantastic collection depicts a photo of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong, and you can actually see Neil

A powerful new image of the giant Jupiter has emerged online. This enhanced colour image was created by citizen scientist Kevin M Gill showed the biggest planet in the solar system under the shadow of its biggest moon, called Ganymede. Gill got the image after analysing data from the 20th close flyby of NASA’s Juno spacecraft. During

A bizarre video posted by Russian state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti shows the International Space Station (ISS) breaking apart in an artist rendering after Russian cosmonauts bid adieu. With this video, we are not sure if Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscomos space corporation, is trying to threaten the US or hinting at something

The state of a three-tonne discarded rocket part that should have crashed into the far side of the Moon by now is not known, say astronomers. Scientists had expected the rocket part to hit the lunar surface on Friday at a speed exceeding 8,800kmph, dig out a small crater, and create a plume of smoke.