Space & Spaceflight

The UK Is Getting a Spaceport Too

The UK may have a spaceport within four years—and it will likely be in the northern reaches of Scotland. The plan to have a UK spaceport up and running by 2018 is expected to be announced by the government’s science minister this week, with six potential sites—four of which are in rural Scotland, where it…

Tonight’s Supermoon Will Be Almost as Glorious as Next Month’s

Have you heard? There’s gonna be a Supermoon tonight! It’s a very cool sight to see, especially on a clear night. But it’s way more common than you might think. In fact, the next three full moons this summer will be Supermoons. And astronomers are kind of puzzled as to why we seem to only…

Not a jellyfish. Nor a sperm. In fact, this is a cloud formed by a Russian Soyuz rocket as it rose through the thin air of near space on the morning of Tuesday 8 July. The cross, right at the top of the formation, was made by the Soyuz’s four boosters, as their plumes ballooned…

The Plan to Resurrect NASA’s Long-Lost Satellite Has Failed

Someone throw together an IndieGoGo for a 21 gun salute. The crowdfunded project take control of ISEE-3, NASA’s 30-year-old satellite, is kaput. The sad news is a blow to anyone who loves space, science, or stories of redemption by scrappy underdogs. If you’re just joining us, here’s the backstory: ISEE-3 was a satellite launched in…

Watch a Researcher Zip Line Over the Door to Hell For Science

The more biologists look, the stranger the places they find life. Whether it’s in the boiling mud ponds of Yellowstone or in radioactive seams miles beneath the surface of the Earth, microbes seem capable of surviving just about anywhere. That’s why one team is heading to the deep desert of Turkmenistan to see if life…

A Rare Tour of the Long-Secret Russian Town Where Cosmonauts Are Born

If you went looking for Zvezdny Gorodok, aka Star City, on a map in the 1960s, you’d have no luck. This small town outside of Moscow was long a state secret, and for good reason: It was the base where Cosmonauts came to train for—and recover from—space flight. And it’s still cooking. “Deep within the…

You get three-for-one in this striking image of Saturn: its north polar vortex and hexagon along with its expansive rings. It was captured by Cassini’s wide-angle camera earlier this year. [NASA]

Buzz Aldrin: The First Humans On Mars Should Never Come Home

Buzz Aldrin was the second man to ever set foot on the moon, and he has some opinions about how things should go down when humans first set foot on Mars. Namely that they shouldn’t come home. Ever. Aldrin explained his stance in an AMA on Reddit today, and it’s not that he’s just pro-stranding-people-on-an-alien-world…

Japan’s Super Typhoon Neoguri Looks Terrifying From Space

This is the super typhoon, dubbed Neoguri, that’s currently threatening Japan. It looks intimidating, even from the comfort of the International Space Station. The Japanese meteorological agency reckons it’s the strongest typhoon of the year, so far, and that it could generate winds of up to 170 mph and waves 45 feet in height. Authorities…

Nope, this isn’t an oil painting: it’s the windswept valleys of Northern Africa as photographed by Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency. Pretty, huh? [NASA]

Look at the Aurora Borealis Lighting Up a Frozen Icelandic Cave

It looks like something out of a movie, but is very much real life: you’re looking at the Aurora Borealis as they illuminate a huge cave in Iceland. It’s pretty humbling. The image was captured by photographer Ingólfur Bjargmundsson, from within the 1360-metre-long lava cave. The people in shot aren’t standing on rock: those are…

Think unboxing your new phone or tablet is cool? How about a space plane? This is the moment that European Space Agency scientists saw their IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle for the first time after it arrived in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, last week. That’s quite a package to open. [ESA]

It’s impossible to whistle on the moon

No matter how hard they try, astronauts can’t whistle while they work. Why? It has to do with the air pressure in their spacesuits. From ABC News: So why can’t people whistle while spacewalking? [Former astronaut Dan] Barry said there is a simple explanation. “You can’t whistle because the air pressure in the suit is…

Scientists Discover an Entirely New Kind of Meteorite

At a pink limestone quarry in Sweden, finding meteorite is no big deal—workers have found 101 of them in the past 20 years. But a new space rock discovery has scientists scratching their heads. The meteorite is of a class that’s never before been seen, and it may hold a key to the explosion of…

A Short History of Every Man Who’s Ever Walked on the Moon

Forty-five years ago this month, a human being first set foot on the moon. Despite four and a half decades and amazing leaps in technology, to date only 11 other people have done this – and every one flew in an Apollo mission for the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). Apollo 11 (July 20, 1969)…

How Would Alien Astronomers Find Earth?

This weekend, astronomers announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet anyone has identified yet. The search of habitable planets is intensifying—and with it, questions about whether we’re looking for the exoplanets the right way. For starters, figuring out how Earth would look to aliens is actually pretty useful. The search for exoplanets is an…

Some random person stuck in a cave? Nope: this is one of the European Space Agency’s astronauts training for life in harsh conditions. Scrabbling through Sardinian caves, they collect scientific data and test equipment and protocols like they could, some day, on an alien world. [ESA]

Watch NASA’s Flying Saucer Test Flight Live, Right Here, Right Now

NASA is about to send this sci-fi flying pie into the far reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, then watch it fall back to earth. The testing starts at 2:15 PM EST, and we’ve got a live feed for you right here after the jump. Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream This crazy contraption is the Low…

Here’s What a Lighting Storm Looks Like From Space

Astronaut and Vine aficionado Reid Wiseman just posted this video of a thunderstorm over Texas as viewed from the International Space Station in space. Just try and take your eyes off it. I dare you. https://gizmodo.com/iss-astronauts-make-the-best-vines-everyone-else-just-1594343005

How We Could Find Aliens By Looking For Their Pollution

Remember chlorofluorocarbons, aka CFCs? The big, bad ozone-depleting pollutant 1) sticks around for tens of thousands of years and 2) is almost entirely man-made. That means if extraterrestrial life are anything like us, according to astrophysicists at Harvard, CFCs could be a key to finding aliens. First, a quick primer on how we could even…