Space

Google Military-Controlled Satellite Reaches Orbit, We Don’t Feel Lucky

According to the company, the GeoEye-1 satellite is the highest resolution commercial satellite orbiting the planet right now. It reached orbit yesterday, but in reality, it’s not an ordinary commercial satellite: it’s fully controlled by the Department of Defense’s U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. And two guys named Larry and Sergei. Part of the US National…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Sep 7

Hubble Repair Mission More Risky than You Would Ever Imagine

If you think that the final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope is going to be boring, you haven’t seen this video yet. Not only the astronauts will be risking their lives as usual at 366 miles above the Earth, but the sheer amount and the difficulty of the tasks-from repairing components to replacing…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Sep 6

The Mysterious “Arcs” of Saturn’s Moons

Saturn’s moons Anthe and Methone are getting in on the ring action that made the planet they orbit so famous. As you know, Saturn sports a whole series of glamorous rings, so huge and reflective that astronomers have been seeing them for centuries. Now it turns out that Saturn’s moons Anthe and Methone have accumulated…

io9 Annalee Newitz Sep 5

The Latest in Space Tourist Fashion

When file-sharing destroys the movie biz, at least special effects designers will still have work — in the aerospace industry. Orbital Outfitters, the first company to manufacture special pressurized spacesuits for civilians, is hiring special effects designers from Hollywood to help. This swanky suit that you see here, created with help from special effects maven…

io9 Annalee Newitz Sep 5

Destinations for Your Next Scifi Themed Vacation

Star Trek: The Experience closed earlier this week, meaning that Las Vegas will no longer serve as the destination for those looking to survive a Borg attack or enjoy a Risa Colada at Quark’s Bar. And, unless you’ve got $20 million to drop on a ticket, actual space tourism remains off the table. But fear…

io9 Lauren Davis Sep 4

The Wind-Swept Clouds of Mars

The Phoenix Lander look a series of photographs of the polar skies this week, and researchers have turned them into a short movie that gives you a shivery sense of what it would be like to stand under Martian skies. Those are ice water clouds, swooshing overhead very much the way clouds do on Earth.…

io9 Annalee Newitz Sep 3

The Deadly Aftermath of a Rocket Explosion Seconds After Launch

While space travel is safe for the most part, sometimes things go really wrong. Like last week’s NASA’s rocket explosion on the Wallops Island, where an ATK Launch Vehicle X-1 exploded only seconds after liftoff, with hazardous debris falling on land and sea. We are used to seeing the fireworks in the air, but what…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Sep 2

Galactic Cluster Collision Divides Ordinary Matter from Dark Matter

Almost six billion years ago, two of the largest gravitational structures in the universe slammed into each other with velocities in the millions of miles per hour. Galactic clusters are collections of galaxies (sometimes thousands of them) that seem to hang together in violation of the known laws of physics. Not only did this ancient…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Aug 29

Gamma Rays of the Dead Shine Like a Nightmare into the Eyes of the Living

When you look into the heart of the Crab Nebula, you are staring at the gamma-radiation-soaked nightmare of history. You may have already known that this gorgeous nebula is the result of a supernova that Chinese and Arab astronomers recorded back in 1054. But what you didn’t know is that the dead star became a…

io9 Annalee Newitz Aug 28

A New Look At Our Gamma Universe

Here’s what the universe would look like if your eyes could see gamma rays. The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) showed off its abilities this week by taking this “full sky” gamma image in just 95 hours of observation time. NASA’s new gamma telescope is ready to find all sorts of cool, exotic cosmic…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Aug 28

Computer Virus Finds Its Way Into Orbit Aboard ISS Systems

The ISS is full of laptops, used for experiments, email, or just watching movie rips on VCDs in 2001. But this time, someone’s laptop has managed to make it all the way up into Earth orbit carrying the Gammima.AG worm-one that leeches login data for Asian MMORPGs. We’re doomed! The ISS doesn’t have a full-time…

Space & Spaceflight John Mahoney Aug 27

Russian Astronaut Uses ISS to Take Photos of Ossetia Invasion while NASA Looks to the Other Side

According to the NASA International Space Station status report, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera with 800mm telephoto lenses and a video camera to take images of the “after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus.” In theory, this seems to have violated the non-military use clause of the station, but Russia has…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz Aug 26

Very Large Array Getting Even Larger

The 27 massive antenna dishes that make up the Very Large Array radio telescope have given us some astonishing glimpses into the cosmos (and have repeatedly detected signals sent by intelligent aliens in some of our favorite scifi films). As impressive as it is, the VLA is about to get a major upgrade. Astronomers are…

io9 Ed Grabianowski Aug 25

A Professional Food Critic Samples Space Food

Bill Daley is the food critic for the Chicago Tribune, accustomed to differentiating the finer points of the expensive, aged steaks of Rush Street, not the freeze dried packets of astronaut cuisine. So when NASA sent him a few packets to test out (most of them cooked through injection with hot water) we were pretty…

Space & Spaceflight Mark Wilson Aug 25

Spitzer Space Telescope Celebrates 5th Birthday With Portrait of Stellar Nursery

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the last of the space agency’s Great Observatories satellites to launch, celebrated its fifth birthday recently… giving me the opportunity to post this amazing multigenerational picture of star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia, 6,500 light-years from Earth. The photo takes in an area equivalent to four full moons and puts on…

Space & Spaceflight Elaine Chow Aug 23

Is the Earth Quarantined???

Click to view Why haven’t we met aliens yet? And why aren’t we sending rockets all over the solar system? There is only one plausible explanation. Earth is being quarantined! A combination of higher alien civilizations and our own Earth-based military forces are working together to keep the Earth contained and neutralized. The reasons why…

io9 Annalee Newitz Aug 22

Now You Can Ogle Mars via Webcam

Want to see what Mars looked like a few days ago, so you can pretend you’re flying in orbit around the red planet almost in realtime? You could be doing that right now, thanks to the European Space Agency’s Mars webcam. Mounted on the Mars Express Probe is a visual light camera that basically takes…

io9 Annalee Newitz Aug 22

Four Reasons Not to Give Up on Interstellar Travel

Click to viewAccording to the scientists who attended this year’s Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, humans may never be able to achieve interstellar travel. Aerospace experts from NASA to MIT claim that finding the amount of energy and time we’d need to cross the huge distances involved is out of the realm of possibility.…

io9 Nivair H. Gabriel Aug 22

Iran Hopes to Send a Man to Space Within 10 Years

After a test satellite launch (Iran: success! USA: failure!) this past weekend carried out with one of their many, many missiles, Iran is rolling with the momentum and announcing plans to put a man in space within 10 years. While the feasibility of such a plan remains up in the air, it of course isn’t…

Space & Spaceflight John Mahoney Aug 21

Texas House Sucked Into Wormhole

Click to viewLast summer, a condemned house in Houston, Texas was sucked into a small wormhole, its wooden facade slowly slurped though another dimension and spit out into an alley behind the backyard. This bizarre mashup of real estate and theoretical physics was created by local artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, who saw in…

io9 Annalee Newitz Aug 21

Google Military-Controlled Satellite Reaches Orbit, We Don’t Feel Lucky

Hubble Repair Mission More Risky than You Would Ever Imagine

The Mysterious “Arcs” of Saturn’s Moons

The Latest in Space Tourist Fashion

Destinations for Your Next Scifi Themed Vacation

The Wind-Swept Clouds of Mars

The Deadly Aftermath of a Rocket Explosion Seconds After Launch

Galactic Cluster Collision Divides Ordinary Matter from Dark Matter

Gamma Rays of the Dead Shine Like a Nightmare into the Eyes of the Living

A New Look At Our Gamma Universe

Computer Virus Finds Its Way Into Orbit Aboard ISS Systems

Russian Astronaut Uses ISS to Take Photos of Ossetia Invasion while NASA Looks to the Other Side

Very Large Array Getting Even Larger

A Professional Food Critic Samples Space Food

Spitzer Space Telescope Celebrates 5th Birthday With Portrait of Stellar Nursery

Is the Earth Quarantined???

Now You Can Ogle Mars via Webcam

Four Reasons Not to Give Up on Interstellar Travel

Iran Hopes to Send a Man to Space Within 10 Years

Texas House Sucked Into Wormhole

Southwest Is About to Limit Power Banks on Flights

Damn, the ‘Power Rangers’ Reboot Could’ve Had Four Movies

The Live-Action ‘One Piece’ Team Wants to Go the Distance

‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Will Please Gross Horror Fans

Somehow Paramount’s ‘Avatar’ Movie Has Leaked, Too

The World Is Basically Begging for Another iPod

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

OpenAI Says Elon Musk Is ‘Injecting Chaos’ with Recent Legal Maneuver

This Loud-Ass Party Speaker Almost Got Me High AF

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

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