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Georgina Torbet

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. In that time she's covered a whole lot of space news as well as features on topics like the upcoming exploration of Venus, the nitty gritty of the geology of Mars, and what it takes to build a next-generation observatory.

Though she's been in science journalism for six years, she started off life in academia in quite a different field, doing a PhD in psychology. Doing science experiments was fun, but communicating about them to other scientists and the public was even better, hence the switch in careers.

She has also written for outlets like The Verge, Ars Technica, and Futurism, and likes to attend planetary science conferences whenever possible to get a glimpse into the day to day work of scientists in the field.

One of her favorite things she's ever written is the Digital Trends series Life on Mars, which dug into all the technical details of what it will take to put humans on Mars - including the technologies we haven't developed yet. That series won a Dotcomm Platinum award for excellence in digital communication, and remains something she's very proud of.

Georgina lives in Berlin, Germany, where it's cold but good fun. When she isn't at work she's tending to her ever-growing collection of houseplants or enjoying a great Gin & Tonic, as she also writes about cocktails for The Manual.

This image shows an artist’s reconstruction of the star WOH G64, the first star outside our galaxy to be imaged in close-up. It is located at a staggering distance of over 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This artistic impression showcases its main features: an egg-shaped cocoon of dust surrounding the star and a ring or torus of dust. The existence and shape of the latter require more observations to be confirmed.

Astronomers snap first up-close image of a star outside our galaxy

NASA’s Curiosity captured this panorama using its Mastcam while heading west away from Gediz Vallis channel on Nov. 2, 2024, the 4,352nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The Mars rover’s tracks across the rocky terrain are visible at right.

Check out this incredible panorama of Mars taken by Curiosity

A stunning panorama shows the haunting terrain of the Gediz Vallis channel, where the Curiosity rover has been exploring.
An artist's depiction of the system showing the host star, transiting planet, misaligned transition disk, and wide binary companion (in the background).

Scientists discover a baby exoplanet ‘just’ 3 million years old

Scientists have discovered a nearby exoplanet that is just a baby by planetary standards, located 520 light-years away.
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SpaceX makes nail-biting sixth Starship test flight, but fails to catch booster

The SpaceX Starship sailed through a sixth test flight, but unlike the previous historic test, this time the company wasn't able to catch the booster.
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Here’s what NASA plans to do with its shiny new SpaceX spacecraft

NASA has big plans for its two new lunar spacecraft, currently under development by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Image of the irregular dwarf galaxy Sextans A, located at a distance of about 4 million light years from us, towards the edge of the Local Group, captured by the VST (VLT Survey Telescope), an Italian telescope managed by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, Chile.

Stunning images of nearby galaxies from the VLT Survey Telescope

A telescope in Chile has taken five beautiful images of nearby galaxies.
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (from top) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and the Starliner spacecraft.

Starliner astronauts are healthy and not losing weight, NASA says

NASA has denied rumors that two of its astronauts are losing weight on the ISS, saying they are in outstanding health.
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See SpaceX’s mighty Starship on the launchpad ahead of sixth test flight

SpeceX is gearing up for another test flight of the Starship on Monday, November 18.
A supermoon rises over Huntsville, Alabama, home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Aug. 19, 2024. Supermoons are the biggest and brightest full Moons of the year because the Moon is within 90% of its closest point to Earth.

Don’t miss the Beaver Moon, the last supermoon of 2024

Keep a look out tomorrow night for the moon to appear bigger and brighter in the sky.
The Lyrid meteor shower

How to watch the prolific Leonid meteor shower, which peaks this weekend

The Leonid meteor shower is an impressive yearly astronomical event that you can catch this weekend.
Hera will perform a swingby of Mars in March 2025 as a way of gathering extra momentum on its way to the Didymos binary asteroid system. The spacecraft will fly within the orbits of both Martian moons Deimos and Phobos, and perform science observations of the former body and the planet's surface, in synergy with the UAE's Hope orbiter and gathering preparatory data for JAXA-DLR's MMX Martian Moons eXploration mission due to be launched in 2026.

Planetary defense mission Hera blasts off toward Mars

The European Space Agency's Hera mission is on its way toward Mars, where it will get a gravity assist before going on to its asteroid target.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pictured left to right, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps.

NASA astronauts keep quiet about medical issue returning from ISS

Three NASA astronauts who recently returned from the International Space Station have declined to discuss a medical issue that occurred following landing.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, in this image from Oct. 30, 2024.

NASA fires up its X-59 quiet supersonic jet engine for the first time

NASA wants to bring back supersonic air travel with its X-59 jet.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the space station.

SpaceX Dragon to give the International Space Station an altitude boost today

Today sees a first for the International Space Station as a SpaceX Dragon performs a reboost maneuver.
This archival photo shows engineers working on NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft on March 23, 1977.

How the 47-year-old Voyager spacecraft are still exploring space

The Voyager 1 and 2 probes were launched in 1977 and they're still going. Keeping them working isn't easy, though.
NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli (from left) give a thumbs up after voting as Texas residents from the International Space Station. The duo filled out electronic absentee ballots in March 2024 and downlinked them to Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which relayed the votes to the county clerk’s office.

How NASA astronauts vote from space

How do you vote when you're 250 miles above the nearest polling station? NASA came up with an answer for its astronauts.
The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago. The smaller spiral on the left, catalogued as IC 2163, passed behind NGC 2207, the larger spiral galaxy at right. Both have increased star formation rates. Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year. Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form. (Find these areas by looking for the bluest regions).

Creepy cosmic eyes stare out from space in Webb and Hubble image

In time for Halloween, the Webb and Hubble space telescopes have worked together to image a creepy pair of cosmic eyes.
Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful backdrop of glowing gas clouds.

See the dramatic and spooky Dark Wolf Nebula

See a spooky cosmic wolf in this stunning space image from the European Southern Observatory.
An artist’s concept of an Artemis astronaut deploying an instrument on the lunar surface.

See the polar moon sites where NASA plans to land its astronauts

NASA has plans to send astronauts back to the moon in 2026. Now, it is sharing a short list of locations where they could land.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbits 259 miles above Oregon.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon is doing a shuffle at the ISS — here’s how to watch

This week a SpaceX Crew Dragon will take one of the tiniest flights ever, hoping just a few meters over from one port of the ISS to another.
This artist’s concept depicts a potential volcanic moon between the exoplanet WASP-49 b, left, and its parent star. New evidence indicating that a massive sodium cloud observed near WASP-49 b is produced by neither the planet nor the star has prompted researchers to ask if its origin could be an exomoon.

Scientists find evidence of hellish, volcanic moon orbiting a distant exoplanet

Scientists have not yet found direct evidence of a moon outside our solar system -- but they just found a hint of a hellish one.
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A Boeing-built satellite appears to have exploded in orbit

A satellite designed and built by Boeing appears to have exploded in orbit, for unknown reasons.
Evolution of R Aquarii

Hubble captures image of a spectacular ‘stellar volcano’

Hubble has homed in on a nearby star called R Aquarii, which is throwing out material for billions of miles around it.
This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us.

See the stunning sights of the Euclid telescope’s 208-gigapixel cosmic atlas

The huge and detailed mosaic is just a preview of the data to come from this recently launched space telescope.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this timelapse photo of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand just before sunrise on Sept. 28, 2024. At the time, the comet was about 44 million miles away from Earth.

Comet last seen in the Stone Age makes appearance over Earth

A comet that passes by Earth just once every 80,000 years has been spotted in the skies, but it may not survive for much longer.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.

Europa Clipper blasts off to study whether Jupiter’s icy moon could host life

NASA's Europa Clipper mission aims to study whether the liquid water ocean beneath Europa's icy crust could potentially support life.
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NASA’s Crew-8 astronauts will stay in orbit a little longer

Weather conditions in Florida mean that the return of four crew members from the International Space Station has been delayed again.
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How to watch SpaceX’s fifth Starship test flight on Sunday

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its mighty Starship on its fifth test flight, scheduled for Sunday, October 13.
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter.

How to watch the Europa Clipper mission launch on Monday

The launch of NASA's Europa Clipper mission to the icy moon of Jupiter was delayed because of Hurricane Milton. Now, the launch could go ahead on Monday.
An aurora as seen from the space station.

Stunning aurorae visible around the world caused by solar storms

Beautiful aurorae were visible in locations around the world this week because of increased activity from the sun.
Hurricane Milton is pictured as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Yucatan Peninsula from the space station on Oct. 8, 2024.

View of Hurricane Milton captured from space by ISS astronaut

As Florida prepares for the incoming Hurricane Milton, it has been captured from space by an astronaut on the International Space Station.
An artist’s conception of the “steam world” GJ 9827 d, shown in the foreground in blue.

James Webb discovers a new type of exoplanet: an exotic ‘steam world’

Researchers using James Webb have identified a new and exotic type of planet called a steam world, with an atmosphere almost entirely composed of water vapor.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is depicted receiving a laser signal from the Deep Space Optical Communications uplink ground station at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility in this artist’s concept. The DSOC experiment consists of an uplink and downlink station, plus a flight laser transceiver flying with Psyche.

NASA can now talk to its spacecraft using lasers

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications test has completed its first phase, showing that laser communications in space are possible and faster than radio.
Engineers work on NASA’s Voyager 2 at JPL in March 1977, ahead of the spacecraft’s launch that August. The probe carries 10 science instruments, some of which have been turned off over the years to save power.

NASA turns off another of Voyager 2’s instruments to save power

The Voyager spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, has turned off its plasma science instrument to save power for exploring interstellar space.