A first-of-its-kind mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Thursday, July 2, 5:09 a.m. EDT (9:09 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. A robotic servicing spacecraft called LINK, built by Katalyst Space, will blast…
Half a century after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the director returns to the subject of UFOs with “Disclosure Day.” His science fiction films are informed by his fascination with alien encounters in American suburbia Jake New | Freelance Writer June 11, 2026 Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Disclosure Day, his latest UFO-inspired…
A remarkable haul of more than 400 gold coins found off the coast of Devon, England, has finally been linked to the ship that carried it. After 30 years of archaeological work and historical research, investigators have identified the wreck as the Dom van Keulen, a Dutch merchant vessel transporting Moroccan gold during the 17th…
File: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands in launch position at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base at sunset. Image: SpaceX SpaceX is getting ready to kick off the back half of 2026 with a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base Wednesday night. The Starlink 17-46 mission will…
NASA is recruiting research participants for the agency’s next simulated deep space mission. Beginning no earlier than August 2027, research volunteers will spend one year living and working in interplanetary environments at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, operating under isolated conditions expected during crewed missions to the Moon or Red Planet. Insights from this…
Philadelphia politicians hoped to replicate the success of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Instead, the 1926 world’s fair lost millions of dollars, essentially bankrupting the city on the eve of the Great Depression Meilan Solly | Senior Associate Digital Editor, History June 16, 2026 An aerial view of the Sesquicentennial International Exposition Public domain via Wikimedia…
There’s an imaginary line between the North Pole and the South Pole. We call it the rotation axis. For the Earth, the rotation axis points toward a bright star, Polaris, which is visible on clear nights in the Northern Hemisphere. If you want to know which way to spin your globe, make the goofy “thumbs-up”…
NASA’s Artemis II mission will send astronauts around the Moon for the first time since 1972. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 mission will test a cargo lander to supply future lunar missions. Both are slated to launch in 2026. Credit: Blue Origin In 2026, astronauts will travel around the Moon for the first time since…
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 551 rocket stands at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of the Leo Atlas 8 (LA-08) mission launch. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now Update July 2, 12:14 a.m. EDT (0414 UTC): ULA updated the T-0 liftoff time. United Launch Alliance is closing a big chapter…
On 1st July 2026, new findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) were published. They shed light on the far future of planetary systems like our own. A Sun-like star that lived out its life became a red giant and then shed its outer layers, leaving a hot, dense core called a white dwarf….