News without the noise
Space news: launches, missions, telescopes and discoveries, from NASA, ESA, SpaceX and the rest of the industry.
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NASA has asked commercial space companies for information on servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, with options including boosting its orbit, enhancing its performance and resilience, or conducting a controlled reentry.
Astronomers have reported an unprecedented gamma-ray burst event, GRB 160425A, in which two distinct bursts, one short and one long, erupted just four minutes apart. Detected in 2016 by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the event is described in a paper published in Nature Astronomy and may require a rethink of how gamma-ray bursts are classified and how they originate.
Cowboy Space, a startup, has revealed specifications for its Big Iron medium-lift launch vehicle, named after the classic country song, though Ars Technica's Rocket Report notes the company has little hardware to show and trails many other launch providers nearing the pad with medium-class rockets.
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India's space agency is set to launch the NVS-03 navigation satellite on Friday, October 30, aboard a GSLV-F18 rocket from Sriharikota, aiming to boost the country's NavIC navigation network.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have recently turned their attention to the Cat's Head Nebula, a small but visually striking part of the Carina Nebula about 7,500 light-years from Earth. The resulting images, captured in visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared light, give astronomers a detailed look at how massive stars shape their environment and influence the birth of new stars.
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Virgin Galactic has unveiled Apeiron, the first of its next-generation Delta-class spaceships, at its factory in Mesa, Arizona. The company expects its first commercial flight in early Q2 2027, with a second ship to follow in late Q2 or early Q3.
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A rose-colored meteorite found in the Sahara Desert in 2022 has been identified as one of the oldest Martian rocks ever discovered on Earth, formed more than 4.1 billion years ago and showing signs of interaction with ancient water, NASA-funded scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.
NASA has released its 2026 In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) State of Play, a 368-page document that the agency says has become the industry standard for understanding what ISAM hardware exists and where the field is heading.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image featuring a barred spiral galaxy and a gravitational lens, as part of preparations for the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
A new study suggests that the Sun’s spicules, spike-like geysers of plasma, may not be individual jets but an optical illusion created by complex three-dimensional curtains of plasma, while also identifying giant plasma tornadoes that could help explain why the corona is much hotter than the surface.
Astronomers have spotted a dead star surrounded by a debris disk split into two distinct rings, a configuration they believe was shaped by two planetary bodies that partly survived the star’s violent transformation and a possible preview of the solar system’s fate billions of years from now.
Ars Technica reports that Musk and Shotwell cleared a path for SpaceX to contracts at NASA and the US military.
Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech manages for NASA, will expand aerospace research, hands-on training and innovation with $27.5 million in gifts from philanthropists Foster and Coco Stanback.
Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II lunar flyby mission and a former NASA chief astronaut, has been appointed associate vice president at Caltech and deputy director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He begins his new role on Nov. 30, 2026.
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United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday it plans to return its Vulcan rocket to flight on November 13, nine months after a solid rocket booster anomaly led to a stand-down, with a mission to carry 40 satellites for Amazon's Leo broadband constellation from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The launch date is pending range approval.
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NASA has completed integration of the Space Launch System core stage with the twin solid rocket boosters for the Artemis III mission, moving the rocket one step closer to launch. The 212-foot core stage was lifted into place inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center on October 28.
NASA has selected 19 new citizen science proposals that will put volunteers to work on tasks ranging from hunting free-floating planets to listening to plasma waves and mapping iron on the Moon. Twelve of the projects were chosen through the agency's Citizen Science Seed Funding Program, which supports scientists who want to build volunteer participation into their investigations.
A long-standing hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth has been challenged by a new study finding that successful cometary delivery of prebiotic chemicals was highly unlikely.
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Astronomers have announced the first dwarf planet candidate discovered by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, an icy world designated 2026 ED138 that orbits the Sun at about 46 astronomical units, just beyond Pluto. The object was pieced together from 30 detections captured by the observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope over 20 nights between March and July this year, combined with archival images from the Dark Energy Camera dating back to 2016, giving researchers roughly a decade of data to reconstruct its orbit.
· 4 sourcesThe James Webb Space Telescope has released a new image of N159, a turbulent star-forming region 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
Radiation levels near the Moon are higher than in low Earth orbit but not as dramatically as previously assumed, according to preliminary measurements from NASA's Artemis I mission, published by Polish researchers in the journal Radiation Measurements.
A NASA systems engineering team has detailed three exploratory architecture concepts for the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a flagship space telescope slated to launch in the 2040s that aims to directly image Earth-like exoplanets. The concepts, described in a June 2026 study published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, balance science goals with engineering needs as the mission moves toward final design.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has published the first clear image of China's Shenlong spaceplane in orbit, revealing a design that closely mirrors the US Space Force's X-37B. The photograph, taken by a Vantor (formerly Maxar) satellite in 2024, was included in the DIA's annual 'Challenges to Security in Space' report and first highlighted by space journalist Andrew Jones.
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NASA has committed to launch the Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX) mission by 2031, a Caltech-led space observatory that will produce the first deep all-sky maps in ultraviolet light, providing unprecedented views of a dynamic universe of stellar flares, supernovae and neutron-star collisions.
NASA has provided new details on its Artemis III mission, which will no longer aim for a lunar landing but instead serve as a complex orbital docking rehearsal in low Earth orbit. The mission, now scheduled for summer 2027, will see four astronauts dock with prototype landers built by Blue Origin and SpaceX, testing procedures critical for future Moon landings.
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NASA's Perseverance rover has measured Martian dust particles clinging to spacesuit material samples it carries, including grains small enough to penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The findings, collected over 1,645 Martian days and published Tuesday, Oct. 27, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could inform spacesuit and habitat design, dust-removal procedures and crew health standards for future NASA missions to Mars.
NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has ended its science mission and is expected to break up in Earth's atmosphere in the next few weeks, after more than two decades studying gamma-ray bursts and other violent cosmic events.
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Astranis has upgraded its fourth launch contract with SpaceX to a dedicated Falcon 9 mission, set to carry all six satellites of the company's Block 4 production run to geostationary orbit in 2028, the company announced Monday.
Astronomers have found what they say is the first known star that would appear green to the human eye: a white dwarf, or dead star, named WD J1330+6435. Research led by astrophysicist Mark Hollands of the University of Warwick shows the star's ultra-dense atmosphere suppresses other colours, leaving a ghoulish chartreuse glow.
The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has completed a test orbital delivery of a survival kit, using a SpaceX Starfall reentry capsule launched from Cape Canaveral on October 20. The demonstration, part of the Rocket Cargo program, dropped an inflatable liferaft and standard nautical survival gear from orbit, marking a step toward using commercial rockets to rush supplies to remote locations within minutes.
An international team of astronomers has discovered three actively feeding supermassive black holes inside a single galaxy more than 12.5 billion light-years away. Observed as it was just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, the galaxy, designated J0148-4214, provides a remarkable snapshot of the early universe's chaotic processes.
Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have detected what may be the first known moon outside our Solar System, a giant gaseous body in the CD-35 2722 star system that blurs the line between planets and moons. The candidate exosatellite, described in a study published in Nature, circles a brown dwarf rather than a planet, and its mass rivals that of Jupiter.
Samples collected from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission have revealed surprising new details about the formation of the Solar System, challenging assumptions about the asteroid's origin and suggesting Jupiter played a key role in mixing materials from the inner and outer Solar System nearly 4.5 billion years ago.
A mysterious cloud that appears each Martian spring and summer, stretching over 1,000 miles before vanishing, may be caused by a physical process never before directly observed in any planet’s atmosphere, according to a new study.
· 2 sourcesNASA has laid out the full operating plan for Artemis III, its 2027 mission to rehearse future Moon landing operations in low Earth orbit, naming the four astronauts who will fly it. NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas will join European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on the planned 14-day mission aboard Orion, testing commercial landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX before crews begin landing near the Moon's South Pole in 2028.
· 2 sourcesNASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has concluded its science mission, the space agency announced, ending more than two decades of observations that transformed the study of gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic explosions. The spacecraft, now orbiting less than 275 kilometres above Earth, can no longer keep its telescopes steady, and is expected to re-enter the atmosphere in the coming weeks.
NASA announced Friday it remains on track to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028, laying out detailed plans for a competitive face-off between SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander in Earth orbit next year. Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed the agency will launch Artemis III in summer 2027 as a docking exercise with both landers, confined to Earth orbit, before selecting one company for the first crewed Moon landing since Apollo.
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The US Space Force is under pressure to identify and build a new heavy-lift launch site by 2030, adding a third launch base to relieve strain on the decades-old facilities in Florida and California, but no location has been chosen and land acquisition remains unresolved, officials said.
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Two LaserSETI detectors installed at Saudi Arabia's AlUla Manara observatory have begun scanning the sky for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, marking the first Asian site in a growing global network designed to spot brief laser pulses from distant civilizations.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has pushed back against a NASA safety panel's suggestion that around 22 launches might be required to support a Starship landing on the Moon, calling the figure "way too high" and putting the actual number at 6 to 8. The disagreement, aired on X, comes as the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel also warned about future access to low Earth orbit if SpaceX phases out its Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX has told the US Space Force it will not accept three military launch contracts it was offered, while a NASA safety panel has warned that Starship's lunar landing may require up to 22 refueling missions. Separately, Spain's PLD Space says its Miura 5 small-lift rocket is nearing final integration, targeting a first flight before mid-2027.
Astronomers from Cornell and the University of Bristol, using the James Webb Space Telescope, have found that WASP-17 b, a puffed-up 'hot Jupiter' about 1,300 light years away, is the first exoplanet shown to be noticeably lopsided. The evening edge of its atmosphere expands to 1.8 times the size of its morning edge, the result of a 650 kelvin temperature difference between the two sides, according to a new paper in Nature Astronomy.
For years, NASA has declined to publicly specify how many times SpaceX's Starship would need to launch and refuel in orbit to support a Moon landing. Now, according to a report from Ars Technica, the internal estimate has settled at 22 launches, the highest figure to emerge publicly.
The federal government has formally submitted a final bid to the European Space Agency (ESA) to send Australian of the Year and astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg to the International Space Station in 2028. Science Minister Tim Ayres confirmed the bid on Friday and revealed that over $6 million in private and philanthropic pledges had been secured, with the industry-led 'flyKatherine' campaign raising a reported $25 million to help fund the multimillion-dollar mission.
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A strange radio signal from the outskirts of the Milky Way has astronomers puzzled: the object, designated VT J1906+0849, has been brightening and fading over decades, with its radio spectrum shifting in ways that do not match any known celestial phenomenon. The source, located at least 49,000 light-years from Earth beyond the Norma-Cygnus spiral arm, was first noticed as a bright radio transient in 2017 data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey, but subsequent analysis of older observations revealed it had been active since at least 2005, with no trace in 1996. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.
A new statistical analysis of about 100,000 quasars has found a correlation between dust obscuration and the speed of supermassive black holes, providing evidence for a population of recoiling black holes that have been kicked from their galactic centres after a merger. The findings, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, support theoretical predictions that uneven gravitational waves can drive the remnant of a black hole merger into a pendulum-like oscillation, leaving a trace in the light from surrounding gas and dust.
· 2 sourcesNASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a detailed image of a gravitational lens, part of a preparatory campaign to guide the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s study of dark matter. The lens, formed by a foreground elliptical galaxy 4.5 billion light-years away, magnifies a background galaxy nearly twice as far, appearing as an arc-counterarc pair that will help astronomers calibrate dark matter analyses for Roman’s broader surveys.
The US Space Force is confronting a looming launch crisis as SpaceX phases out its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket in favor of the larger Starship, leaving military satellite programmes without guaranteed access to orbit and exposing the Pentagon's heavy reliance on Elon Musk's company.