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The four astronauts of SpaceX’s private Polaris Dawn mission that will perform the first commercial spacewalk are taking delays to their launch in stride. The mission was initially slated to launch Aug. 27, but was delayed to Aug. 28 due to technical issues. Polaris Dawn was then postponed two more days, to no earlier than […]

A search of more than 1,300 galaxies for extraterrestrial signals has helped to constrain expectations as to how many communicating, technological civilizations may exist beyond Earth. Conducted with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia, the search concerned itself with low radio frequencies in the 80–300 MHz range. For comparison, SETI (which stands for Search

NASA’s effort to return humans to the moon have been hit with another critical report on its progress. The NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a scathing report on the Mobile Launcher 2 (ML-2) project. ML-2 is needed to transport NASA’s enormous Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket to the launch pad. The

An apparent record-breaking ancient astronomy “observatory,” complete with a sundial, was uncovered recently during a temple dig in the old capital of lower Egypt. The mud-brick temple building was found in a larger complex known now as the Temple of Buto, but which was named after Wadjet during the sixth century BCE, from which it

Blue Origin launched and landed its eighth suborbital space tourism mission this morning. Blue Origin, which is run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sent the six-person NS-26 flight to space from its West Texas spaceport today. Liftoff occurred at 9:07 a.m. EDT (1307 GMT; 8:07 a.m. local Texas time). The flight reached a maximum altitude

The inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which will send NASA’s ESCAPADE mission on its way to Mars, now has a tentative launch date. NASA announced on Monday (Aug. 26) that the mission will launch no earlier than Oct. 13. Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket will lift off from Space Launch

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, is now operational in Ghana, furthering the country’s ambitions for digital connectivity. Rebecca Slick Hunter, Director of Starlink Global Licensing and Market Activation, announced Ghana’s entry into the growing list of African nations benefiting from Starlink’s advanced satellite broadband services. Licensing and Regulatory Framework Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) approved

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) has revealed the five top-performing teams that will proceed to the Advanced Phase Two Space Tech Mission Idea Contest (ST-MIC) Training and Bootcamp. The competition initially attracted over 40 mission ideas from universities across Kenya. Twenty mission ideas were selected for Phase 1 of the training, which was conducted from July

SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded, at least for a little while. A Falcon 9 successfully launched 21 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites this morning (Aug. 28), sending them to orbit on the record-breaking 23rd mission for the rocket’s first stage. That booster encountered a problem during its return to Earth, however, toppling over

Japan has called an end to its SLIM moon mission after failing to make contact with the lander since April. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on a H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center on Sep. 7, 2023. The diminutive lander made a successful, yet lopsided,