The Blue Moon Mark 2 lander is currently scheduled to make its debut in 2030, but with some modifications to its supporting infrastructure, it could potentially be ready at an earlier date. Credit: Blue Origin. In the spaceflight community, it can be fashionable to support one company or agency at the expense of others. Even well-known…
Astronomers thought JWST might find signs of life. Now they have a new plan. Despite astronomers’ hopes, the James Webb Space Telescope’s observations haven’t uncovered any exoplanets with Earth-like conditions or signs of life. The latest article from Science Editor Asa Stahl explores why this may be, and what’s next in the hunt for life beyond our…
On 2nd July 2026, Airbus Defence and Space announced a new contract with the European Space Agency to design and build the Aeolus-2 wind sensing satellite. The agreement was signed at ESA’s UK headquarters, ECSAT, in Harwell. The announcement establishes the next step in Europe’s program to observe winds from space and to improve weather…
If you’ve seen illustrations or models of the solar system, maybe you noticed that all the planets orbit the Sun in more or less the same plane, traveling in the same direction. But what is above and below that plane? And why are the planets’ orbits aligned like this, in a flat pancake, rather than…
After Americans declared independence on July 4, 1776, a waning gibbous moon rose in the night sky. To the people celebrating the birth of a new nation, it would have looked much the same as the moon we see today. But there was one subtle difference: 250 years ago, the moon was about 31 feet…
America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark A Smithsonian magazine special report “Force may subdue, but love gains”: The Quaker practice of conscientious objection evolved through Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi before becoming the hallmark of the Civil Rights movement Jeff MacGregor | Writer-at-Large, Smithsonian Summer 2026 Getty Images The 1955-56 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, was won by the…
Image: Blue Origin Blue Origin suffered a major blow last month when its New Glenn rocket experienced a catastrophic anomaly during a static fire test at Launch Complex 36 on Florida’s Space Coast. The test was being conducted without its mission payload attached – a batch of Amazon LEO internet satellites that had been scheduled…
US homeowners have embraced home batteries in record-breaking numbers in early 2026, spurred on by state incentives while seeking to offset rising residential electricity costs. The trend could even unlock a more flexible energy supply for power grid operators and even AI data centers. New home battery installations reached a record 673 megawatts of energy…
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that launched NASA’s Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, seen from a window on the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. Image: NASA. Update June 24, 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 UTC): Added a comment from NASA. More than four months after NASA released a report classifying the 2024 Crew Flight Test…
NASA astronauts Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will fix the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 during a spacewalk today (June 30), and you can watch the action live. Chris Williams and Jessica Meir will perform a roughly 6.5-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) today, starting at about 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT). You can…