Science

NASA is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Chandra X-ray Observatory launch by sharing never-before-seen photos of the largest known spiral galaxy in the universe. The Chandra X-ray observatory was launched on July 23, 1999. Since then, it has scoured the universe to look for X-ray emissions from exploded stars, clusters of galaxies…

Enlarge / File photo of a Falcon 9 launch on May 6 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.SpaceX It was only about 10 days ago that the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage failed in flight, preventing the rocket from delivering its 20 Starlink satellites into a…

Tiny rock, huge problem. Expensive ProblemsA more than $800-million-dollar space telescope has been damaged by a tiny piece of space debris.In a press release, the European Space Agency admitted that the Gaia spacecraft was damaged in April by a fast-traveling "micrometeoroid," described as an extremely tiny piece of space rock, that damaged its…

Ask Anca Selariu what it was like living on Mars for a year, and there is no hesitation in her answer: “absolutely exhilarating”.The US navy microbiologist is one of four Nasa crew members who returned to Earth earlier this month after becoming the first humans to reside on the red planet, or at least the closest thing the US space agency…

Supplies of dissolved oxygen in bodies of water across the globe are dwindling rapidly, and scientists say it's one of the greatest risks to Earth's life support system.Just as atmospheric oxygen is vital for animals like ourselves, dissolved oxygen (DO) in water is essential for healthy aquatic ecosystems, whether freshwater or marine. With…

SpaceX wants the Federal Aviation Administration to let its grounded Falcon 9 rocket fleet return to flight amid an ongoing public-safety investigation, letting the company resume its array of uncrewed commercial missions while engineers study what happened during Thursday's upper-stage malfunction.But what about Falcon 9 missions with humans on…

Asian honeybees have an impressive playbook of tactics to defend their hives: hypnotic shimmering waves to warn off predatory hornets; defensive balls to roast intruders alive with their body heat; and, of course, their once-in-a-lifetime use of a stinger.Add another weapon to the honeybee arsenal: wings. Scientists in Japan have learned that…

Super Heavy is breathing fire once again.SpaceX ignited the engines on its Super Heavy booster yesterday (July 15), ahead of Starship's next integrated flight test (IFT), expected in the next few weeks. IFT-5 will be fifth launch of Starship's fully-stacked vehicle, and its most ambitious to date.The spacecraft has been contracted by NASA as…

For the past few weeks, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) after the first crewed voyage of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft hit a snag. Concerns raised by Boeing and Nasa over thruster problems and several helium leaks (helium is used in Starliner’s engine system) have…

“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner once wrote. “It’s not even past.” Nobody knows this better than astronomers. Everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe has left a mark on the sky; with the right technology, much of it is now decipherable.For the past quarter-century, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has been…