Virgin Galactic completed what is expected to be its final test flight on Thursday before taking paying customers on brief trips to space, marking what the space tourism company described as a “fantastic achievement” in what has been a long road to commercial operations. Six of the company’s employees, including two pilots, landed at Spaceport […]
Under a cloudless sky, about 20,000 eclipse chasers watched a rare solar eclipse plunge part of Australia’s northwest coast into brief midday darkness on Thursday with an accompanying temperature drop. The remote tourist town of Exmouth, with fewer than 3,000 residents, was promoted as one of the best vantage points in Australia to see the […]
A European spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter in a mission to explore whether its ocean-bearing moons can support life. The six-tonne probe, named Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), blasted off on an Ariane 5 rocket on Friday at 1.14pm UK time from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Juice was due to […]
A European spacecraft is about to embark on a 6.6 billion km journey to explore whether Jupiter’s ocean-bearing moons can support life. The six-tonne probe, named Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), will be heading towards the solar system’s biggest planet carrying 10 scientific instruments, in what is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) biggest deep-space mission […]
Aerospace and satellite companies are urging governments around the world to adopt a “highway code” to tackle space junk. The Space Safety Coalition (SSC), an international organisation of satellite operators, aerospace companies and industry representatives, has published new guidelines to protect satellites orbiting the Earth from being damaged by space debris. In it, the coalition […]
Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has confirmed four galaxies dating to when the universe was around 300–500 million years old. The telescope was designed to probe the early universe and initial surveys have identified many possible candidate galaxies of extremely high redshift – a measure of the speed that helps gauge distance. […]
An ultramassive black hole around 33 billion times the mass of the Sun has been discovered by astronomers in the UK. Scientists from Durham University said the gargantuan black hole is one of the biggest ever found. The team described its findings, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, as “extremely […]
Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are challenging what scientists previously understood about their origins. The galaxies are far bigger and more mature than anyone expected, in what was thought to be the dawn of the universe. Using the first data released from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) last July, the scientists […]
Astronomers have discovered a new ring system in our Solar System. The ring system is around a newly discovered dwarf planet, named Quaoar, which is around half the size of Pluto and orbits the Sun beyond Neptune. Researchers say it orbits much further out than is typical for other ring systems, calling into question current […]
A rare green comet, that has not been seen for 50,000 years, is about to make its closest pass by Earth, becoming visible in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), this celestial object hails from the Oort cloud at the outermost edge of the solar system. Its green glow is a result of ultraviolet […]
