When Firefly Aerospace launches its Blue Ghost lander to the moon’s surface later this year, it will do so aboard a SpaceX rocket and with $112 million in funding from NASA. But CEO Bill Weber sees a future where the Texas-based company goes it alone, completing fully commercial moon missions on a mid-sized rocket built … Read more
Late last year, NASA scientists pressed the start of a long-awaited space mission. In short, they launched a spacecraft towards an asteroid that could very well be made entirely of metal, a composition that appears to be a rarity – at least in the vicinity of our solar system. The robot adventurer is called Psyche … Read more
While examining a nearby supernova with NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, an effort to discover how these stellar explosions ignite charged particles called cosmic rays, scientists have uncovered a bigger mystery. The team found that the supernova, named SN 2023ixf, completely lacks the gamma-ray emissions that should be present when cosmic ray particles are accelerated … Read more
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific developments and more. After years of delays and a dizzying series of setbacks during test flights, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally ready for its first crewed launch. The mission is on track to depart from Florida on May … Read more
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific developments and more. After years of delays and a dizzying series of setbacks during test flights, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally ready for its first crewed launch. The mission is on track to depart from Florida on May … Read more
Two veteran astronauts flew to the Kennedy Space Center Thursday afternoon to prepare for the first pilot launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, a highly anticipated flight that has been years in the making behind schedule after two unmanned test flights and extensive work to solve a variety of technical problems. Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and … Read more
A crucial NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. The budget has ballooned from $5 billion to more than $11 billion, and the sample return date could move from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to attempt to return rock … Read more
A crucial NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. The budget has ballooned from $5 billion to more than $11 billion, and the sample return date could move from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to attempt to return rock … Read more
Earth’s ‘quasi-moon’ probably rocketed away from the actual moon relatively recently in the solar system’s history, a new study suggests. Kamo’oalewa, a 131- to 328-foot-wide (40 to 100 meters) Near Earth Object (NEO), was liberated between 1 million and 10 million years ago by an asteroid impact, an impact that destroyed the 13.7-mile-wide ( 22 … Read more