Space-Missions

NASA announces new lander contracts for Moon Base Phase One – NASASpaceFlight.com We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best…

Understanding how atoms form is a fundamental and important question, since they make up everything with mass. The question of where atoms come from requires a lot of physics to be answered completely – and even then, physicists like me only have good guesses to explain how some atoms are formed. What is an atom?…

Over the past 250 years, the number of “planets” in our solar system has ranged from six to nine — and, briefly, even 11 — depending on what astronomers knew at the time and how they defined a planet. As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, that changing tally offers a unique…

Swirls of wildfire smoke can be seen over Canada. (Image credit: NASA) Wildfires across the globe can be seen all the way from space. And one unexpected tool has come in handy to spot plumes of wildfire smoke: a satellite designed to study Earth’s oceans. What is it? In this photo, we can see swirls…

The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) draws in over 2,000 attendees for five days of discussions on the latest results from the fleet of spacecraft exploring the Solar System. Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute. Scientific conferences play an undervalued, yet essential, role in the exploration of the Solar System.  Since the end of the Apollo…

Exoplanet atmospheres have become prima targets for astrobiologists in the search for life beyond Earth. This is because exoplanet surfaces can’t be directly imaged yet, so astronomers must get creative with how to search for signs of life, also called biosignatures. Presently, powerful ground- and space-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and…

If the number of satellites in Earth’s orbit exceeds 100,000, humanity may lose its ability to study the universe from the planet’s surface. That’s the conclusion of a study conducted by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) which warns that if existing plans to deploy a million orbiting data centers and tens of thousands…

Some of the most massive galaxies in the Universe appear to be missing a lot of stars. That seems unusual, since birthing stars is one of a galaxy’s main tasks as it grows. According to Xin “Cindy” Xiang of the University of Michigan, something is suppressing or quenching the births of stars in these galaxies,…

Human spaceflight has no consensus driver. The Moon, Mars, low Earth orbit, an asteroid — all priorities are functionally a product of opinion, however passionate. There is no objective reason why one should be the goal over any other. Engineering and cost serve as the primary constraints on near-term human exploration goals. But nothing anchors…

Who are the Artemis III crew? On June 9, 2026, NASA announced the crew of Artemis III: commander Randy Bresnik (NASA), pilot Luca Parmitano (ESA), mission specialist Frank Rubio (NASA), and mission specialist Andre Douglas (NASA). Randy Bresnik is a native of Santa Monica, California. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from The…