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SpaceX’s plans to launch its Starship–Super Heavy two-stage rocket 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida have come under fire from its two main rivals: United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The Starship vehicle is the world’s largest rocket. Its two stages are SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster rocket, […]

Scientists may have solved a lingering mystery surrounding the ice giant Uranus and its weak radiation belts. It’s possible the belts’ weakness is linked to the planet’s curiously tilted and lopsided magnetic field; the field could be causing “traffic jams” for particles whipping around the world. The mystery dates back to Voyager 2’s visit to

Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket has finally taken flight, carrying the hopes of a continent on its broad back. The Ariane 6 launched for the first time ever today (July 9), lifting off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 3:01 p.m. EDT (1901 GMT). There was a lot riding on this debut: It

A sparkling jeweled ring, created through a cosmic phenomenon called gravitational lensing, has been imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. The new image captures a distant quasar known as RX J1131-1231, which lies about 6 billion light-years from Earth. The powerful gravitational field of a nearby elliptical galaxy, located in the foreground of the

NASA’s Goldstone planetary radar system recently recorded two near-Earth asteroids, 2024 MK and 2011 UL21, flying by our planet. Perhaps a tad alarming, one was only detected 13 days before it safely bypassed Earth, but scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California assure it never posed a threat. Still, the imagery

Two Chinese astronauts continued installing space debris protection outside the nation’s Tiangong space station this week. Ye Guangfu and Li Cong, two members of the three-person Shenzhou 18 mission, spent about 6.5 hours working outside Tiangong on Wednesday (July 3). Li Guangsu assisted the expedition from inside Tiangong, operating the station’s robotic arm. The main

New images published by the European Space Agency have captured a 600-kilometer-long (373-mile-long) snaking scar on Mars’ surface in greater detail than ever before. The Red Planet is full of scratches and scars, and this one, named Aganippe Fossa, is another of these ditch-like grooves with steep walls — more specifically, however, Aganippe Fossa is

Key Highlight Nigeria as the first Center for CropWatch in West Africa. According to the news released by the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Nigeria has been inaugurated as the first Center for CropWatch in the West African sub-region. Chief Uche Nnaji, the Minister of the Federal Ministry of Innovation Science and Technology

Key Highlight Endurosat Partners with BIUST to build Botswana’s first satellite. EnduroSat, a Bulgaria-based satellite builder, is partnering with the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) to build the nation’s first satellite. BOTSAT-1 will be built on EnduroSat’s 3U microsatellite platform and equipped with a hyperspectral camera to support the country’s mining and

The hunt for dark matter is about to get much cooler. Scientists are developing supercold quantum technology to hunt for the universe’s most elusive and mysterious stuff, which currently constitutes one of science’s biggest mysteries. Despite the fact that dark matter outnumbers the amount of ordinary matter in our universe by about six times, scientists