The Corn Moon will be full on the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 2, at 1:22 p.m. EDT (1722 GMT), four days before the moon occults Mars, according to NASA’s SkyCal site. In New York City, the moon will be situated in the constellation Aquarius, rising the evening of Sept. 2 at 8:06 p.m. local time.…
Ozone pollution has increased across the Northern Hemisphere over the past 20 years, researchers have found in a new study — the first study to use ozone data collected by commercial aircraft. In the new research, scientists from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder studied levels…
See what’s up in the night sky for September 2020, including stargazing events and the moon’s phases, in this Space.com gallery courtesy of Starry Night Software. Tuesday, Sept. 1 from 9:55 to 11:13 p.m. EDT — Moon occults star Tau Aquarii In the eastern evening sky on Tuesday, Sept. 1, observers using binoculars and backyard…
A clear night sky offers an ever-changing display of fascinating objects to see — stars, constellations, and bright planets, often the moon, and sometimes special events like meteor showers. Observing the night sky can be done with no special equipment, although a sky map can be very useful. Binoculars or a good beginner telescope will…
We now know what to call the crewed lunar rover being developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Toyota. The pressurized moon vehicle, which is expected to launch in the late 2020s, has been nicknamed “Lunar Cruiser,” JAXA and Toyota representatives announced in an update last week. The moniker, a nod to Toyota’s…
WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company is making “good progress” on its next-generation Starship launch vehicle despite delays in the schedule of test flights of the vehicle. In an interview broadcast during the Humans to Mars Summit by the advocacy group Explore Mars Aug. 31, Musk emphasized the progress the company…
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s space agency on Aug. 31 announced the first major contract awards for a network of satellites in low Earth orbit that will talk to each other and relay data down to military forces on the ground, on ships or airplanes. Lockheed Martin received a $187.5 million contract and York Space Systems…
VALLETTA, Malta — Spanish launch startup PLD Space has completed critical testing of the company’s Teprel-B rocket engine. The engine is expected to power the single-stage suborbital Mirua 1 launch vehicle. In an Aug. 28 statement, PLD Space said it had successfully completed a series of thrust vector control tests on the kerosene-fueled Teprel-B rocket…
SpaceX has pushed the launch of its next big batch of Starlink internet satellites back two days, to Thursday (Sept. 3). A Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled to loft the 60 Starlink satellites on Tuesday morning (Sept. 1) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But those plans have changed, SpaceX representatives announced today…
Galactic halos are both more massive and more complicated than scientists realized, according to new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The venerable telescope turned its sights on the neighboring Andromeda galaxy using dozens of different quasars to map the galactic halo. Andromeda, more formally known as M31, is a spiral-shaped galaxy about the same…
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance has not yet confirmed exactly what caused a dramatic abort of a Delta 4 Heavy launch just three seconds before liftoff on Aug. 29. “We are in the middle of conducting a thorough investigation to determine the root cause of the NROL-44 on-pad abort,” ULA spokeswoman Julie Arnold said in…
A long-retired NASA satellite burned up in Earth’s atmosphere over the weekend, the agency has confirmed. NASA launched the satellite, called Orbiting Geophysics Observatory 1, or OGO-1, in September 1964, the first in a series of five missions to help scientists understand the magnetic environment around Earth. OGO-1 was the first to launch but the…
WASHINGTON — Technology executive and Pentagon advisor Victoria Coleman has been named director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department announced Aug. 31. Coleman replaces Steven Walker, who stepped down in January 2020. DARPA deputy director Peter Highnam has served as acting director. A DARPA spokesman said Coleman will officially join the…
HELSINKI — China is making progress with a spaceport to facilitate sea-based launch activity and development of rockets, satellites and related applications. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), the country’s main space contractor, is developing the spaceport in Haiyang City on the coast of the eastern province of Shandong. The ‘Eastern aerospace port’…
A golden age may be coming for human spaceflight research as more astronauts than ever fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard commercial crew vehicles and through private companies, NASA officials said during an online conference Thursday (Aug. 27). “We’re going to have more people on the International Space Station than we’ve had in…
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is one step closer to getting up close and personal with a host of strange space rocks as assembly begins. Lucy will make an ambitious journey across the asteroid belt out to Jupiter’s neighborhood, studying a total of eight different space rocks over nearly a decade. But before the spacecraft can begin…
The information locked inside black holes could be detected by feeling their ‘hair,’ new research suggests. Black holes are celestial objects with such massive gravity that not even light can escape their clutches once it crosses the event horizon, or point-of-no-return. The event horizons of black holes lock secrets deep within them — secrets that…
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab successfully launched a radar imaging satellite for Capella Space Aug. 30 in the first flight of its Electron rocket since a failure nearly two months earlier. The Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 11:05 p.m. Eastern. It deployed its payload, the Sequoia radar imaging…
Rocket Lab is back in action. The California-based company’s two-stage Electron rocket aced its return-to-flight mission tonight (Aug. 30), delivering an Earth-observation satellite to orbit. The launch, which took place at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT on Aug. 31) from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand launch site, was the first for the company since July 4,…
WASHINGTON — SpaceX completed its first Cape Canaveral polar launch Aug. 30, delivering an Argentine radar satellite and two smallsats into low Earth orbit using a Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 lifted off at 7:19 p.m. Eastern, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, overcoming a 60% chance of a weather delay from extensive…