Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
China's Shenzhou 20 astronauts aboard the Tiangong space station will conduct their third spacewalk in the coming days, according to the China Manned Space Agency on Aug 14. The three person crew is led by Senior Colonel Chen Dong, with Colonel Chen Zhongrui and Colonel Wang Jie. They have lived and worked aboard Tiangong for more than three months, arriving on April 25 after launch and do

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 14, 2025
SpaceX launched new batches of Starlink satellites from California and Florida to continue the growth of its broadband Internet service. The California launch lifted off at 1:05 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday, it carried 24 more Starlink Satellites. It took roughly an hour for the upper stage to deploy its satellites after it

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
NASA has awarded Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) a contract to investigate launching critical robotics technologies into orbit, marking a key step toward future autonomous operations in space. The U.S.-based commercial space company has completed the initial study and plans to propose a follow-on in-space demonstration mission, with a NASA award decision expected in September. Momentus is one of tw

Paris, France (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
The European Space Agency's FLEX Earth Explorer mission has reached a major milestone with the integration of its sole instrument, FLORIS, onto the satellite platform. The assembly took place at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, after FLORIS arrived from Leonardo's facility in Florence, Italy. Designed to map global vegetation fluorescence, FLORIS will quantify photosynthetic activity

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, Richard I. Anderson of EPFL and Emily Hunt of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy produced the first galaxy-scale map linking variable stars to their host open clusters, tallying nearly 35,000 variables in 1,200 clusters. The study appears as a Letter in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Open clusters serve as natural laboratories beca

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
All four spacecraft of NASA's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission have successfully maneuvered into their final science orbits as of Aug 7. Launched into Earth orbit on March 11, PUNCH's four suitcase-sized spacecraft are now spread out along the planet's day-night boundary, giving the mission a continuous, unobstructed view of the Sun and its surroundings. This

Paris, France (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
Astronomers have determined that TRAPPIST-1 d, a rocky exoplanet similar in size to Earth and located in a potentially temperate zone, lacks an Earth-like atmosphere based on new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope data. The finding narrows the search for worlds with conditions similar to Earth, according to lead author Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb of the University of Chicago and Univers

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
In 2024, NASA's Mars rover Perseverance retrieved an unusual specimen named Sapphire Canyon, a red mudstone with white, black-edged spots that could reveal potential sources of organic molecules on the planet. To prepare for its eventual return, scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech tested optical photothermal infrared spectroscopy (O-PTIR) on an Earth rock with simi

London UK (SPX) Aug 15, 2025
A PhD student and his supervisor have developed a simple way for testing for active life on Mars and other planets using equipment already on the Mars Curiosity rover and planned for future use on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. There is enormous interest in the possibility of past or present life beyond Earth, with space agencies spending a great deal of time and money exploring suit

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 15, 2025
NASA is accepting contest entries from student teams to design, build and test rovers on the moon and Mars. In the Human Exploration Rover Challenge, students need to make models that are capable of going over a course while completing tasks for future Artemis missions, NASA said in a news release. In the challenge, teams design projects that sample of soil, water and air over a