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Latest by G. Torbet

An image of the 22nd orbit of the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter shows the region close to the north pole of the planet. There is a huge diversity in the colors and shapes of these vortices (hurricane-like storms). Scientists need to create a catalog of these storms in order to understand how they form.

You can help analyze Juno images of Jupiter’s clouds

A citizen scientist project is inviting members of the public to help identify atmospheric features in Juno data.
Seen are six views of the Nili Fossae region of Mars captured by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, one of the instruments aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This giant map of minerals on Mars is a piece of modern art

NASA recently released the first part of a map of the martian surface, in the form of a 5.6 gigapixel image in 72 colors.
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket sits on the pad at the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand for wet dress rehearsal ahead of the CAPSTONE launch.

How to watch NASA launch a satellite into an experimental lunar orbit

This Monday, NASA is launching a tiny satellite with a big mission - to test a never-before-tried orbit around the moon for a future lunar outpost.
A rocket body impacted the Moon on March 4, 2022, near Hertzsprung crater, creating a double crater roughly 28 meters wide in the longest dimension. LROC NAC M1407760984R; image enlarged 3x

See the crater left by a space junk impact on the moon

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped an image showing the crater created by a Chinese rocket booster which crashed into the moon earlier this year.
XROOTS hardware undergoing ground-based plant tests.

How astronauts on the ISS are growing crops without soil

Astronauts on the ISS recently harvested vegetables from a system which grows plants without soil or other growth medium.
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NASA’s moon rocket could launch as soon as August this year

NASA says there's a chance that its next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, could launch for the first time this summer.
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NASA’s Psyche mission launch delayed until at least 2023

NASA's mission to visit a metal asteroid with a spacecraft named Psyche has hit a roadblock, with the launch being delayed until 2023 at the earliest.
This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Hubble Space Telescope snaps sparkling globular cluster near the heart of our galaxy

Stars shine like diamonds in this week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows globular cluster Terzan 9.
The Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is shown here in far-infrared and radio wavelengths of light.

See our galactic neighbors as you’ve never seen them before

Images of four nearby galaxies to the Milky Way show the dust in and around these galaxies in all its glory.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, shown in this illustration, has been exploring our solar system since 1977, along with its twin, Voyager 2.

The long goodbye of NASA’s forty-year-old Voyager probes

The Voyager probes, the most distant human-made objects in the universe, are entering their twilight years.
Illustration of two newly discovered, rocky "super-Earths" that could be ideal for follow-up atmospheric observations.

Two rocky super-Earths discovered just 33 light-years away

Researchers using NASA's TESS satellite have discovered two rocky exoplanets in a system in our cosmic backyard, located just 33 light-years from Earth.
This illustration shows a white dwarf star siphoning off debris from shattered objects in a planetary system. The Hubble Space Telescope detects the spectral signature of the vaporized debris that revealed a combination of rocky-metallic and icy material, the ingredients of planets. The findings help describe the violent nature of evolved planetary systems and the composition of its disintegrating bodies.

Hubble Space Telescope finds destructive white dwarf ripping apart planetary pieces

The Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a case of cosmic cannibalism, with a white dwarf consuming rocky and icy material from its surrounding environment.
china fast telescope open for business

‘Alien’ signal seen by Chinese telescope likely due to radio interference

A signal detected by a Chinese telescope and originally reported as possible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence is almost certainly due to human factors.
An image of NASA’s moon rocket at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, rolling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building for a 4.2-mile journey to Launch Complex 39B on March 17, 2022.

NASA beginning its 4th go at crucial Artemis mission rocket test tonight

NASA is once again preparing for a major test of its new Space Launch System rocket, intended to carry astronauts to the moon under the Artemis program.
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SpaceX fires employees for open letter critical of Elon Musk

A group of SpaceX employees who circulated an open letter criticizing the company's founder, Elon Musk, have been fired from the company.
spacex sarah 1 livestream

How to watch SpaceX launch a German radar satellite this morning

This morning, SpaceX will be launching a German radar satellite using one of its Falcon 9 rockets. Here's how to watch.
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Astra rocket fails to deliver two NASA storm satellites to orbit

Today, Sunday June 12, private rocket company Astra will launch two satellites for NASA.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7496, which lies over 24 million light-years away in the constellation Grus. This constellation, whose name is Latin for crane, is one of four constellations collectively known as the Southern Birds.

Hubble images a globular cluster that holds a mystery

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a sparkling collection of thousands of stars.
Artist's conception of a neutron star with an ultra-strong magnetic field, called a magnetar, emitting radio waves (red). Magnetars are a leading candidate for what generates Fast Radio Bursts.

What is creating these incredibly bright radio flashes?

Exceedingly brief but incredibly bright, the strange phenomenon of Fast Radio Bursts continues to puzzle scientists.
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows part of the scarred and colourful landscape that makes up Aonia Terra, an upland region in the southern highlands of Mars.

See the crater scar left on Mars by an ancient impact

The surface of Mars is dotted with craters, created when asteroids, meteoroids, or comets smashed into the planet and caused large impact marks.
Navy UAP UFO Footage

NASA to wade into the issue of UFOs with new study

NASA is stepping into an age-old debate to take what it describes as a scientific perspective on the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).
This is an artist’s impression of a black hole drifting through our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole is the crushed remnant of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. The surviving core is several times the mass of our Sun. The black hole traps light because of its intense gravitational field. The black hole distorts the space around it, which warps images of background stars lined up almost directly behind it. This gravitational "lensing" effect offers the only telltale evidence for the existence of lone black holes wandering our galaxy, of which there may be a population of 100 million. The Hubble Space Telescope goes hunting for these black holes by looking for distortion in starlight as the black holes drift in front of background stars.

Hubble spots isolated black hole drifting alone through our galaxy

Out in the depths of our galaxy roam lonely monsters: Isolated black holes which drift through space unattached to stars or other black holes.
A rock in the front left wheel of Perseverance on Sol 343, image was acquired on Feb. 6, 2022 (Sol 343).

Perseverance rover picks up a rock friend on Mars

The Mars rover Perseverance has picked up a rock hitchhiker which has been riding in its wheel for the past four months.
This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter.

The painstaking process of fixing NASA’s Lucy solar array issues

Engineers have been working to fix a problem with NASA's spacecraft Lucy which launched in October 2021 and is on its way to the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter.
Clockwise from top left are three of the observatories that participated in a 2021 planetary defense exercise: NASA’s Goldstone planetary radar, the Mount Lemmon telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey, and NASA’s NEOWISE mission. At bottom left is an illustration of the path of Apophis’ close approach in 2029.

Astronomers model an asteroid striking Earth using asteroid Apophis

An international team of space researchers recently came together to test what might happen if Earth were threatened by a large asteroid strike.
A test version of the payload module of ESA's exoplanet-detecting Plato spacecraft underwent a prolonged vacuum soak within Europe’s largest thermal vacuum chamber, to evaluate its endurance of space conditions.

Next-generation exoplanet hunter Plato goes through vacuum testing

Plato is a next-generation exoplanet-hunting satellite, set for launch in 2026.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:07 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, carrying the Dragon spacecraft on its journey to the International Space Station for SpaceX’s 24th commercial resupply services mission.

How to watch SpaceX launch a cargo ship to the ISS this week

This week, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft will travel to the International Space Station carrying supplies and research. Here's how to watch.
The crewed spaceship Shenzhou-14, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, is launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, June 5, 2022.

Three Chinese astronauts arrive at new space station Tiangong

Three Chinese astronauts -- Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe -- have arrived at China's new space station, which is currently under construction.
In this image, taken on 23 May 2022, engineers at Thales Alenia Space in Turin are attaching a combined sunshield and solar panel module to the main body of ESA’s Euclid spacecraft. The module has two functions: whilst the solar panels will provide the spacecraft with power, the sunshield will shade the instrument-carrying payload module from the Sun’s intense radiation.

Dark matter studying spacecraft Euclid gets its sunshield

Dark matter telescope Euclid is getting ready for launch, and recently a module of combination sunshield and solar panels has been added to the spacecraft.

Perseverance rover captures a Martian dust cloud forming for first time

Images captured by the Perseverance rover on Mars show a gust of wind lifting up a dust cloud, and data reveals how dramatic dust storms form.
The James Webb Space Telescope.

The first images from James Webb will be released in July

NASA has announced the date when the first full-color images from the new James Webb Space Telescope will be released.
Illustration of the MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars.

NASA’s Mars orbiter MAVEN saved in a ‘race against time’

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is back up and running following a scare that put it into safe mode for several months.
Blue Origin launching its fourth crewed flight.

How to watch Blue Origin launch space tourists to the edge of space today

Blue Origin, the private launch company owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, will shortly be launching six space tourists on a suborbital trip to the edge of space.
Scientists believe that the moon's snakelike Schroeter's Valley was created by lava flowing over the surface.

Ancient volcanoes could be a source of ice on the moon

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have found that there could be thick sheets of ice on the moon, created by ancient volcanoes.