Space & Spaceflight

How to Use the International Space Station’s Toilet

Ever wondered what astronauts do when they need to evacuate their bowels and bladder? In this video, Samantha Cristoforetti explains how a trip to the toilet works aboard the International Space Station. Of course astronauts need to pay a visit to the John, just like we all do—perhaps more than ever, now there’s an espresso…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

This Zero-Gravity Training Plane Only Carries Science

NASA’s vomit comet is a second-hand McDonnell Douglas C-9B Skytrain II, a hollowed-out airliner that can briefly create weightless conditions for the occupants. But NASA isn’t the only one with toys: the ESA also maintains its own weightless training aircraft, a stripped-out Airbus A310. In order to create brief periods of weightlessness, pilots climb, top…

Space & Spaceflight Chris Mills

Earth’s Oceans May Have Crash-Landed via Ancient Asteroids

SimEarth was right about one thing. The best way to wet up a planet? Hurl a bunch of icy asteroids at it. That, at least, is one interpretation of a new study published in the Royal Astronomical Society, which supports the hypothesis that most of our planet’s water crash-landed via space rocks eons ago. And…

Space & Spaceflight Maddie Stone

Carl Sagan’s Solar Sail Is Ready For Its First Test Flight

“There’s just a tremendously exciting prospect called solar sailing. [It] travels on the radiation and particles that come out of the sun, the wind from the sun. Because it has a constant acceleration, it can get you around the inner part of the solar system a lot faster…than the usual sorts of rocket propulsion.” That’s…

Space & Spaceflight Darren Orf

Shooting a Laser at a Planet, But Not To Blow it Up

This breathtaking photo shows the intense orange beam of a new 22-watt laser pointed at the planet Saturn. Wait, isn’t this like the shocking scene in Star Wars where the Death Star’s superlaser completely annihilated planet Alderaan? Thankfully humankind has not evolved (yet) to the level where we can destroy entire planets with the help…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

Wait, Is This River Floating?

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly just tweeted this photo, that he took from aboard the International Space Station. You can see the Bighorn River, which stretches through Wyoming and Montana… and, wait, why does it look like it’s floating? The explanation for this optical illusion is known as relief inversion, and you may often experience it…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

Russia’s Rogue Spacecraft Disintegrated Safely

On April 27th, a Russian resupply ship to the ISS started spinning out of control shortly after reaching space. For more than a week, Progress 59 has been hurtling around the Earth in an increasingly unstable orbit, but tonight, it re-entered safely (and violently) over the Pacific Ocean. Progress 59 reached orbit successfully after its…

Space & Spaceflight Chris Mills

That’s No Fort… It’s an Observatory

This stunning aerial photograph of the Very Large Telescope platform somehow reminds me of a smaller base in a real time strategy game, like Starcraft or Total Annihilation. However, this scene is perfectly peaceful. What you’re seeing are the four Unit Telescopes, the four Auxiliary Telescopes, and the VST, operated by the European Southern Observatory…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

“Curtain Eruptions” on Enceladus Give Us a New Look at Saturn’s Moon

Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth largest moon, is a cold ball encrusted almost entirely in ice. One of its defining features are geyser-like jets of water vapor that shoot out of its surface. But a new analysis suggests those jets are not jets after all, but something odder: curtain eruptions. The jets may have just been an…

Space & Spaceflight Sarah Zhang

Dry Ice Is the Perfect Choice When You Have to Clean Your Space Mirror

Here are two engineers practicing “snow cleaning” on a test telescope mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the coolest way to dust off any surface without scratching it. The photo above was taken at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Carbon dioxide gas turns…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

The Sun Celebrated Cinco de Mayo With This Beautiful Solar Flare

If you’re gonna celebrate, do it in style. Well, the Sun did to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, spewing out this gorgeous solar flare that’s captured here in a variety of different wavelengths. The images were obtained by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on May 5th at 6:11 p.m. EDT. Each one reveals a different wavelength of…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

The Space Artist Who Perfectly Painted All Our Cosmic Dreams

John Conrad Berkey (August 13, 1932 – April 29, 2008) was probably the best known and loved space artist who ever lived on this planet. You may have seen the world-famous American illustrator’s work on dozens of book covers and NASA concept art, or admired his early Star Wars and Star Trek paintings. Berkey was…

Space & Spaceflight Attila Nagy

What Would You Tell NASA to Do to Improve the Mission to Mars?

In what is probably the coolest suggestion box ever created, NASA has announced it wants you to send in tips and wisdom nuggets that might improve its manned mission to Mars. And you could win a few thousand bucks while doing it. The space agency’s on the lookout for detailed ideas that’ll support prolonged human…

Space & Spaceflight Bryan Lufkin

This Is the New Farthest Galaxy in the Universe

A team of researchers has identified the most distant galaxy currently measured in the night sky. Galaxy EGS-zs8-1 is so far from our planet that we’re only now seeing light it emitted a staggering 13 billion years ago. The galaxy is thought to have formed when the Universe was extremely young—clearly the case given the…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Everything We’ve Learned from 50 Years of (Deliberate) Spaceship Crashes

Last week, NASA’s Messenger spacecraft ended its 11-year mission by crashing into Mercury. Of course, Messenger was doomed anyway, but sometimes a mission’s entire point is to smash one thing into a bigger thing and watch the explosion. Messenger isn’t the first (nor the last) craft to end in a dramatic smash. We’ve crashed vessels…

Space & Spaceflight Kiona Smith-Strickland

The Aging Giant of Telescopes, Shrouded In Tropical Mist

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is one of the most famous telescopes in the world—it’s been in a James Bond film (GoldenEye) as well as Contact. Now that the telescope is aging, though, it’s only looking more dramatic. Enrico Sacchetti, whose portraits of telescopes, space shuttles, and remote locations we’re featured on Gizmodo over…

Space & Spaceflight Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

The Sun Just Spat Out a Massive Solar Filament

Last week, the Sun spat out a massive solar filament that extended the star’s visible hemisphere by almost half. This image of that huge lick of plasma was captured by NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Solar filaments are unstable strands of plasma that loop out of the sun because of strong magnetic fields that…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe

Relax, This Moon Isn’t A Death Star

Mimas is a 250 mile wide moon in orbit around Saturn, mostly nonedescript apart from its appearance: it looks creepily, unsettlingly like it’s about to vapourize Saturn and all of its pretty rings. This photo was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft10 years ago, 1.3 million miles away from Mimas. Since then, we’ve learned a lot…

Space & Spaceflight Chris Mills

The Detail That Goes Into Making Orion’s Windows Is Incredible

Given how high-tech spacecraft tend to be, I was surprised to learn that existing space vehicles tend to use good old-fashioned glass (albeit a rather expensive kind). But for the next-gen Orion spacecraft, NASA has been working overtime to find something stronger, lighter, and just a little less fragile. The historical preference for glass is…

Space & Spaceflight Chris Mills

This Is What It Might Be Like to Fly Through a Giant Space Habitat

Want to live in a space city? You can’t move there next week, but artist Micah Ganske has designed an incredible VR experience where you drive a small spacecraft through an O’Neill cylinder, a massive tube-shaped space habitat that spins to create gravity so that people can build cities and farms on its inner surface.…

Space & Spaceflight Annalee Newitz

How to Use the International Space Station’s Toilet

This Zero-Gravity Training Plane Only Carries Science

Earth’s Oceans May Have Crash-Landed via Ancient Asteroids

Carl Sagan’s Solar Sail Is Ready For Its First Test Flight

Shooting a Laser at a Planet, But Not To Blow it Up

Wait, Is This River Floating?

Russia’s Rogue Spacecraft Disintegrated Safely

That’s No Fort… It’s an Observatory

“Curtain Eruptions” on Enceladus Give Us a New Look at Saturn’s Moon

Dry Ice Is the Perfect Choice When You Have to Clean Your Space Mirror

The Sun Celebrated Cinco de Mayo With This Beautiful Solar Flare

The Space Artist Who Perfectly Painted All Our Cosmic Dreams

What Would You Tell NASA to Do to Improve the Mission to Mars?

This Is the New Farthest Galaxy in the Universe

Everything We’ve Learned from 50 Years of (Deliberate) Spaceship Crashes

The Aging Giant of Telescopes, Shrouded In Tropical Mist

The Sun Just Spat Out a Massive Solar Filament

Relax, This Moon Isn’t A Death Star

The Detail That Goes Into Making Orion’s Windows Is Incredible

This Is What It Might Be Like to Fly Through a Giant Space Habitat

Do ‘Disclosure Day’ Prep With a Spielberg Sci-Fi Marathon

How to Watch the F1 Japanese GP 2026 on a Free Channel

Ranking 2016’s Superhero Debuts, 10 Years Later

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‘The Mummy 4’ Is Getting the Family Back Together

JD Vance Says UFOs Are Actually Demons

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Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

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