We know dark matter is out there. It’s just a placeholder term for something we don’t understand, some ghostly mass that explains how galaxies rotate so quickly without flying apart. Fritz Zwicky coined the term ‘Dark Matter’ based largely on his observations of galaxies in the Coma Cluster. Zwicky found that the galaxies were moving…
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…
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 7-13, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week. During the Week NASA will announce the crew for the Artemis III mission on Tuesday morning at Johnson Space Center. Under the reconfigured…
The International Space Station has once again become the stage for groundbreaking science, as NASA continues expanding the capabilities of its Cold Atom Lab, a unique facility designed to create one of the rarest forms of matter ever observed. With a newly installed upgrade, the orbiting laboratory is giving scientists an opportunity to study quantum…
How the technology of Artemis II builds on the past and relies on the new.
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…
Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi movie, Disclosure Day, has finally hit cinemas worldwide. It’s been eight years since the iconic director released a movie in this genre, re-entering his UFO era with a twisted alien thriller. To mark his momentous return to sci-fi cinema, we’ve taken time to gaze across his entire sci-fi slate, ranking them…
Back to Pic of the Day List Ron Brecher from Guelph, Ontario, Canada Sharpless 2–112 is a glowing cloud of ionized hydrogen roughly 30 light-years across, threaded by dark rifts of dust. It lies about 6,500 light-years away in Cygnus and is energized by the hot, massive O-type star BD+45 3216. The imager took nearly…
WASHINGTON — A new report links the long-running technical problems with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle to a combination of overconfidence, unrealistic schedules and NASA’s lack of insight into the vehicle. The report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General, released June 30, adds to the uncertainty about when Starliner will be approved for crewed…
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,…