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Latest by G. Torbet

Artist's concept depicts new research that has expanded our understanding of exoplanet WASP-69 b's "tail."

Astronomers spot strange exoplanet with a tail 350,000 miles long

The recently spotted exoplanet WASP-69 b has a long tail of gas, like a comet.
This is a montage of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.

Feast your eyes on 10 years of Hubble images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

The Hubble Space Telescope has been imaging the outer planets of our solar system for a decade, learning about their strange weather conditions.
An image of the planet Jupiter.

Jupiter will be at its biggest and brightest this weekend. Here’s how to see it

There's a special chance to see Jupiter in the sky this weekend as it comes closest to Earth.
The Orion crew module for NASA’s Artemis II mission.

NASA pushes back its Artemis moon missions due to heat shield issues

NASA is delaying its Artemis II and Artemis III missions to 2026 and 2027 respectively due to issues with the Orion capsule's heat shield.
This image shows the Spiderweb protocluster as seen by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera).

James Webb spots ancient Spiderweb cluster that’s 10 billion years old

An image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a group of galaxies called the Spiderweb protocluster, and it dates to when the universe was young.
Artist's impression of Copernicus Sentinel-1C in its Vega-C launcher

Watch Europe’s Vega-C rocket return to flight after two years

Europe's Vega-C rocket is back in action after a failure in 2022. It will launch the Sentinel-1C satellite tomorrow -- here's how to watch.
Proba-3 spacecraft aligned above Earth

This pair of satellites is going to create an artificial solar eclipse

A pair of spacecraft are launching on a mission to observe the sun's corona by having one cast a precise shadow from which the other can observe.
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Take a flight over Mars’ Ares Vallis in a new video from Mars Express

A video shows a flight over one of Mars's longest channels, the Ares Vallis.
An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft.

It lives! 47-year-old Voyager 1 is back in action

Despite its age and an ever-dwindling power supply, the Voyager 1 probe is back in action following an issue with its communication system.
Featured in this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month is the spiral galaxy NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba. This combination of data from Webb’s MIRI and NIRCam instruments shows the galaxy’s two winding spiral arms and the swirling gas and dust of its disc in magnificent and unique detail.

Webb and Hubble snap the same object for two views of one galaxy

Two different space telescopes have looked at the same galaxy, so you can see the difference in how they observe the universe.
Caption: Artist’s concept of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Saturn’s moon Titan.

SpaceX to launch NASA’s Dragonfly drone mission to Titan

In 2028, a NASA mission called Dragonfly will launch using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on a trip to Saturn's moon Titan.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero galaxy with its MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), resolving the clumpy nature of the dust along the galaxy’s outer ring. The mid-infrared light highlights the gas and dust that are part of star formation taking place among the Sombrero galaxy’s outer disk. The rings of the Sombrero galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars per year, in comparison to the Milky Way’s roughly two solar masses a year. It’s not a particular hotbed of star formation. The Sombrero galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Stunning view of the Sombrero Galaxy captured by James Webb

The James Webb Space Telescope recently captured a new image of a galaxy famously named after the Mexican hat style.
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Watch Blue Origin launch its latest space tourism flight this morning

Blue Origin will shortly be launching its ninth space tourism flight that will carry six private crew members on a 10-minute flight.
This image shows an artist’s reconstruction of the star WOH G64, the first star outside our galaxy to be imaged in close-up. It is located at a staggering distance of over 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This artistic impression showcases its main features: an egg-shaped cocoon of dust surrounding the star and a ring or torus of dust. The existence and shape of the latter require more observations to be confirmed.

Astronomers snap first up-close image of a star outside our galaxy

Astronomers have taken a detailed image of a star outside of the Milky Way for the first time.
NASA’s Curiosity captured this panorama using its Mastcam while heading west away from Gediz Vallis channel on Nov. 2, 2024, the 4,352nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The Mars rover’s tracks across the rocky terrain are visible at right.

Check out this incredible panorama of Mars taken by Curiosity

A stunning panorama shows the haunting terrain of the Gediz Vallis channel, where the Curiosity rover has been exploring.
An artist's depiction of the system showing the host star, transiting planet, misaligned transition disk, and wide binary companion (in the background).

Scientists discover a baby exoplanet ‘just’ 3 million years old

Scientists have discovered a nearby exoplanet that is just a baby by planetary standards, located 520 light-years away.
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SpaceX makes nail-biting sixth Starship test flight, but fails to catch booster

The SpaceX Starship sailed through a sixth test flight, but unlike the previous historic test, this time the company wasn't able to catch the booster.
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Here’s what NASA plans to do with its shiny new SpaceX spacecraft

NASA has big plans for its two new lunar spacecraft, currently under development by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Image of the irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans A, located at a distance of about 4 million light years from us, towards the edge of the Local Group, captured by the VST (VLT Survey Telescope), an Italian telescope managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile.

Stunning images of nearby galaxies from the VLT Survey Telescope

A telescope in Chile has taken five beautiful images of nearby galaxies.
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (from top) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and the Starliner spacecraft.

Starliner astronauts are healthy and not losing weight, NASA says

NASA has denied rumors that two of its astronauts are losing weight on the ISS, saying they are in outstanding health.
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See SpaceX’s mighty Starship on the launchpad ahead of sixth test flight

SpeceX is gearing up for another test flight of the Starship on Monday, November 18.
A supermoon rises over Huntsville, Alabama, home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Aug. 19, 2024. Supermoons are the biggest and brightest full Moons of the year because the Moon is within 90% of its closest point to Earth.

Don’t miss the Beaver Moon, the last supermoon of 2024

Keep a look out tomorrow night for the moon to appear bigger and brighter in the sky.
The Lyrid meteor shower

How to watch the prolific Leonid meteor shower, which peaks this weekend

The Leonid meteor shower is an impressive yearly astronomical event that you can catch this weekend.
Hera will perform a swingby of Mars in March 2025 as a way of gathering extra momentum on its way to the Didymos binary asteroid system. The spacecraft will fly within the orbits of both Martian moons Deimos and Phobos, and perform science observations of the former body and the planet's surface, in synergy with the UAE's Hope orbiter and gathering preparatory data for JAXA-DLR's MMX Martian Moons eXploration mission due to be launched in 2026.

Planetary defense mission Hera blasts off toward Mars

The European Space Agency's Hera mission is on its way toward Mars, where it will get a gravity assist before going on to its asteroid target.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pictured left to right, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps.

NASA astronauts keep quiet about medical issue returning from ISS

Three NASA astronauts who recently returned from the International Space Station have declined to discuss a medical issue that occurred following landing.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, in this image from Oct. 30, 2024.

NASA fires up its X-59 quiet supersonic jet engine for the first time

NASA wants to bring back supersonic air travel with its X-59 jet.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the space station.

SpaceX Dragon to give the International Space Station an altitude boost today

Today sees a first for the International Space Station as a SpaceX Dragon performs a reboost maneuver.
This archival photo shows engineers working on NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft on March 23, 1977.

How the 47-year-old Voyager spacecraft are still exploring space

The Voyager 1 and 2 probes were launched in 1977 and they're still going. Keeping them working isn't easy, though.
NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli (from left) give a thumbs up after voting as Texas residents from the International Space Station. The duo filled out electronic absentee ballots in March 2024 and downlinked them to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which relayed the votes to the county clerk’s office.

How NASA astronauts vote from space

How do you vote when you're 250 miles above the nearest polling station? NASA came up with an answer for its astronauts.
The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago. The smaller spiral on the left, catalogued as IC 2163, passed behind NGC 2207, the larger spiral galaxy at right. Both have increased star formation rates. Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year. Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form. (Find these areas by looking for the bluest regions).

Creepy cosmic eyes stare out from space in Webb and Hubble image

In time for Halloween, the Webb and Hubble space telescopes have worked together to image a creepy pair of cosmic eyes.
Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful backdrop of glowing gas clouds.

See the dramatic and spooky Dark Wolf Nebula

See a spooky cosmic wolf in this stunning space image from the European Southern Observatory.
An artist’s concept of an Artemis astronaut deploying an instrument on the lunar surface.

See the polar moon sites where NASA plans to land its astronauts

NASA has plans to send astronauts back to the moon in 2026. Now, it is sharing a short list of locations where they could land.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbits 259 miles above Oregon.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon is doing a shuffle at the ISS — here’s how to watch

This week a SpaceX Crew Dragon will take one of the tiniest flights ever, hoping just a few meters over from one port of the ISS to another.
This artist’s concept depicts a potential volcanic moon between the exoplanet WASP-49 b, left, and its parent star. New evidence indicating that a massive sodium cloud observed near WASP-49 b is produced by neither the planet nor the star has prompted researchers to ask if its origin could be an exomoon.

Scientists find evidence of hellish, volcanic moon orbiting a distant exoplanet

Scientists have not yet found direct evidence of a moon outside our solar system -- but they just found a hint of a hellish one.