Space & Spaceflight

Our Skies Are More Watched Than Ever, So Why Are Reported UFO Sightings on the Decline?

Reported UFO sightings have been declining in the United States for the last few years, according to the statistician tasked with making sense of all the data acquired by the leading civilian UFO investigation group. The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is a non-profit that investigates reports of UFO sightings. The group encourages people who have…

Space & Spaceflight Jennings Brown

Astronomers Have Captured First Direct Evidence of an Exoplanet Being Born

At this point, we’ve spotted several thousand exoplanets—there’s nothing super exciting anymore about finding a distant star with several worlds orbiting it. But today, scientists are announcing that they have seen an exoplanet in the middle of forming. The dust disk of the star PDS 70 was detected by the Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE and…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Asteroid Mining Might Just Work—If Only We Can Land on the Dang Things

The Rosetta mission’s Philae lander descended toward the two-and-a-half-mile-wide comet at a human’s walking pace. For seven tense hours, scientists in Darmstadt, Germany monitored its radio signal. They would have no idea whether they’d done everything correctly until after the moment of touchdown. If all went well, the lander would press two harpoons into the…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Well, This Japanese Private Rocket Launch Certainly Could Have Gone Better

Saturday’s test of the MOMO-2 unmanned rocket, which was scheduled to be the first privately funded Japanese rocket to reach space, went very poorly for Interstellar Technologies’ Takafumi Horie, a convicted securities fraudster who a 2014 Financial Times profile dubbed “Japan’s enfant terrible.” Footage of the event showed the one-and-a-quarter-ton rocket disastrously failing mere seconds…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

The International Space Station’s New AI-Powered Bot Is Actually Pretty Cool

Introducing CIMON, a floating, basketball-sized robot that will serve as a companion and assistant to crew members aboard the International Space Station. Infused with artificial intelligence, the floating bot is reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but far less evil. We hope. Earlier today, SpaceX successfully launched a recycled Falcon 9 rocket from…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Interstellar Comet ‘Oumuamua Has a Built-In ‘Propulsion’ System

Remember that cigar-shaped interstellar object that whizzed through our Solar System last year? It was pretty weird, right? Well, new research shows ‘Oumuamua is even stranger than we realized. ‘Oumuamua, pronounced “oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah,” is a comet and not an asteroid, according to research published yesterday in Nature. That’s not a huge revelation, as many scientists had…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

The Space Between Stars Is Full of Greasy, Possibly Toxic Carbon

The space between stars may look pretty empty—and for most mundane intents and purposes, it is—but it’s actually full of electromagnetic radiation and vast clouds of matter, together collectively known as the interstellar medium. Some of it is aliphatic carbons that leak from stars, and a new study from University of New South Wales (UNSW)…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

NASA Delays James Webb Space Telescope Yet Again, ‘Commits’ to a 2021 Launch

Following an independent review, NASA’s planned James Webb Space Telescope has received yet another delay in its mission schedule. This time, NASA has moved the target launch from May 2020 to March 2021. If you’re feeling a touch of déjà vu, that’s because this telescope has been subject to nearly annual delays and budget increases…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Two New Papers Offers Clues to Mars’ Weird History

As far as humans are concerned, Mars has two stories. One is in the present: We’re trying to send our ships and our astronauts to the Red Planet in order to understand what it’s like today. But much of that work is meant to tell a second story—what the planet used to be like. A…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

The Discovery of Complex Organic Molecules on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Is a Huge Deal

Using data collected by NASA’s late-great Cassini space probe, scientists have detected traces of complex organic molecules seeping out from Enceladus’ ice-covered ocean. It’s yet another sign that this intriguing Saturnian moon has what it takes to sustain life. If life exists elsewhere in our Solar System, chances are it’s on Enceladus. The moon features…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Hell Yes, Japan’s Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Has Officially Entered Orbit Around the Ryugu Asteroid

After nearly four years of traveling through space, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused with the Ryugu asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed Wednesday. Let the next stage of this historic sampling-and-return mission begin! Earlier today, mission controllers at JAXA triggered Hayabusa2’s chemical propulsion thrusters, bringing the spacecraft into orbit around Ryugu, an asteroid…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

The Rosetta Image Archive Is Now Complete and Freely Available, so You Can See a Comet Like Never Before

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was one for the ages, providing an unprecedented look at this oddly shaped celestial object. The Rosetta probe captured nearly 100,000 images over the course of its mission, all of which are now freely available to the public in a single Rosetta archive. The Rosetta…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

A New NASA-Led Project Means the Search for Aliens Is Heating Up

To date, scientists have catalogued more than 3,500 exoplanets, some of which may even be capable of fostering life. But we simply don’t know. The ability to detect life on distant worlds still eludes us, but a new project coordinated by NASA now takes us a significant step closer to achieving that goal. Six new…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Fantastic New View of Ryugu Asteroid Reveals a Distinctly Dice-Like Shape

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft‘s latest photo of the Ryugu asteroid, taken from a distance of just 25 miles (40 km), shows for the first time surface features like boulders and craters, in addition to revealing the object’s unique dice-like appearance. Remember the Rosetta spacecraft’s first photos of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and how it looked like a…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Black Astronaut Jeanette Epps Still Doesn’t Know Why NASA Cancelled Her Historic Mission This Year

NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, who was slated to be the first African-American spacefarer to serve as a long-term crew member on the International Space Station until she was pulled from the roster in January, is still waiting on an explanation of why. Epps, who holds a Ph.D in aerospace engineering and previously worked with Ford…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

SpaceX Wins $130 Million Falcon Heavy Contract to Launch Classified USAF Satellite in 2020

SpaceX, the Elon Musk-helmed company which earlier this year saw its partially reusable Falcon Heavy officially become the most powerful rocket in the world, has won its first contract to use that system to deliver a classified payload. Per the Verge, the Air Force announced this week the $130 million contract to deliver its AFSPC-52…

Space & Spaceflight Tom McKay

Blue Origin Says It Will Start Selling Tickets for Spaceflights in 2019

Private space company Blue Origin announced that it plans to sell suborbital spaceflight tickets to aspiring space tourists starting next year. No price was given, but the company said it expects to conduct the first passenger tests of the New Shepard launch system “soon.” As Jeff Foust reports in SpaceNews, Blue Origin Senior Vice President…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Passes Enormous Test on a Galaxy

It would be hard to overstate how resilient the theory of general relativity has been. In its hundred-plus-year history, it’s managed to predict things far beyond the capabilities of 1910s experiments, and it withstands every new test scientists throw at it. This time around, researchers flipped typical experiments on their head. Often, scientists look at…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

The Dust Storm on Mars Is So Huge It Now Encircles the Entire Planet

For the past two weeks, a massive dust storm has churned on Mars, forcing NASA to put its Opportunity rover into hibernation mode. But Curiosity, a rover on the other side of the planet, is now feeling the effects of the storm as well, revealing the dramatic, planet-size scale of this dusty weather system. The…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky

America Isn’t Ready to Handle a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact, New Report Warns

We’ve long said that humans generally worry about the wrong asteroids. Tabloids love to publish headlines about “potentially hazardous asteroids,” a category created by NASA that can be a bit misleading. The truly worrisome rocks are the smaller ones that we aren’t tracking. The US National Science and Technology Council knows about this problem—and thankfully,…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Our Skies Are More Watched Than Ever, So Why Are Reported UFO Sightings on the Decline?

Astronomers Have Captured First Direct Evidence of an Exoplanet Being Born

Asteroid Mining Might Just Work—If Only We Can Land on the Dang Things

Well, This Japanese Private Rocket Launch Certainly Could Have Gone Better

The International Space Station’s New AI-Powered Bot Is Actually Pretty Cool

Interstellar Comet ‘Oumuamua Has a Built-In ‘Propulsion’ System

The Space Between Stars Is Full of Greasy, Possibly Toxic Carbon

NASA Delays James Webb Space Telescope Yet Again, ‘Commits’ to a 2021 Launch

Two New Papers Offers Clues to Mars’ Weird History

The Discovery of Complex Organic Molecules on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Is a Huge Deal

Hell Yes, Japan’s Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Has Officially Entered Orbit Around the Ryugu Asteroid

The Rosetta Image Archive Is Now Complete and Freely Available, so You Can See a Comet Like Never Before

A New NASA-Led Project Means the Search for Aliens Is Heating Up

Fantastic New View of Ryugu Asteroid Reveals a Distinctly Dice-Like Shape

Black Astronaut Jeanette Epps Still Doesn’t Know Why NASA Cancelled Her Historic Mission This Year

SpaceX Wins $130 Million Falcon Heavy Contract to Launch Classified USAF Satellite in 2020

Blue Origin Says It Will Start Selling Tickets for Spaceflights in 2019

Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Passes Enormous Test on a Galaxy

The Dust Storm on Mars Is So Huge It Now Encircles the Entire Planet

America Isn’t Ready to Handle a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact, New Report Warns

ASUS Eye Care Monitor Hits an All-Time Low, Only Hours Left to Grab a 27″ Screen at a 15.6″ Budget Price on Amazon

How to Watch Artemis 2, NASA’s First Crewed Mission to the Moon in 54 Years

KitchenAid 4.5-Quart Stand Mixer Is Back at Its Lowest Price, a Last-Minute Spring Sale Deal Outside Amazon Prime Day

‘Pizza Movie’ Has a Hilariously Grisly New Way to Say ‘This Is Your Brain on Drugs’ (Exclusive)

Amazon Makes a Last Push for Govee LED Strip Light at a Black Friday Low as the Spring Sale Winds Down, Works with Alexa and Google Assistant

Forget Shokz, Anker Pushes Soundcore AeroClip Open-Ear Earbuds to an All-Time Low in the Final Hours of Amazon’s Spring Sale

Google Pixel 10 Pro Gets Cleared Out at a Record Low, Now Even Cheaper Than AirPods Pro With Trade-In

Meta’s Two New Smart Glasses Are Slimmer and More Like Regular Glasses

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

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