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Astronomers are sounding alarm bells as the world’s most precious sky-observing location faces a risk of being blinded by light pollution due to a planned renewable energy project. The U.S. energy company AES Energy wants to build a large renewable hydrogen manufacturing complex in Chile, only a few kilometers from the summit of Mount Paranal, […]

SpaceX is set to launch another batch of its Starlink internet satellites Monday (Jan. 20), four days after a test flight of the company’s Starship megarocket ended in an explosion. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 27 Starlink craft is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base Sunday, during a four-hour window that

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will soon start getting back to normal operations after weathering the raging L.A. fires. JPL lies at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles and was threatened by the Eaton Fire, which has devastated neighboring communities such as Altadena. The center — NASA’s lead facility

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring an investigation into what went wrong during the seventh-ever test flight of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket yesterday (Jan. 16). The launch, from SpaceX‘s Starbase site in South Texas, went well at first. Starship got off the pad successfully, and its two stages — the Super Heavy booster and

Europe is moving towards the second launch of its new Ariane 6 launcher after finding and addressing anomalies following its debut flight. Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), presented plans and updates on the agency’s work during an annual press briefing on Jan. 9. The event also drew questions on the

The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship had some serious highs and lows. The company launched its Starship megarocket for the seventh time ever today (Jan. 16), sending the 403.5-foot-tall (123 meters) reusable vehicle aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 5:37 p.m. EST (2237 GMT; 4:37 p.m. local time). One of the

India has become the fourth country in the world to successfully achieve an unmanned docking in space following the US, Russia and China, as two small spacecraft completed the docking maneuver in low-Earth orbit on Thursday, which the Indian space agency described as “a historic moment” for the nation. The successful SpaDeX mission “is a

An X-ray observatory used to study neutron stars is “back in the black” and a cosmic ray detector is ready for possible future upgrades after two astronauts completed a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS). Nick Hague worked to repair the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER, mounted to the outside of the

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket just earned its wings. New Glenn launched for the first time ever this morning (Jan. 16), rising off a pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here on Florida’s Space Coast at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 GMT). About 12.5 minutes later, the rocket’s upper stage reached orbit — the main

Night has fallen for the star-tracking European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, Gaia. The mission, which has been mapping the Milky Way for the last 12 years, shut down science operations on Wednesday (Jan. 15). The close of the mission’s data-collecting phase was necessitated by Gaia running low on cold gas propellant it uses to spin.