Who said science can't be pretty?

A newly-released Hubble image shows Messier 88, a black hole-powered spiral galaxy that is gradually plunging toward the crowded heart of the Virgo Cluster.

The post Hubble Captures Active Spiral Galaxy: Messier 88 appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Um meteoro explodiu na costa de Massachusetts, nos Estados Unidos, provocando um estrondo sentido em vários estados. De acordo com a NASA, a energia libertada foi equivalente a cerca de 300 toneladas de dinamite. 

The post Bola de fogo atravessa céus nos Estados Unidos com estrondo massivo. NASA confirma explosão de meteoro appeared first on Tek Notícias.

The explosion of a New Glenn rocket has generated reverberations across the space industry with the rocket out of service for potentially a year or more.

The post New Glenn failure worsens constrained launch market appeared first on SpaceNews.

Entre galáxias espirais, auroras verdes e novas vistas infravermelhas da enigmática lua Titã, de Saturno, maio confirmou uma vez mais que a fotografia continua a ser uma das formas mais poderosas de explorar lugares onde, por agora, ainda não podemos chegar.

The post Um pôr do sol impossível, um cometa azul e outras imagens da NASA para descobrir em maio appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Jared Isaacman, administrador da NASA, afirmou que a agência espacial vai colaborar com a Blue Origin na investigação do incidente com o foguetão New Glenn, avaliando também eventuais impactos nos programas Artemis e na futura missão Moon Base.

The post Explosão do foguetão da Blue Origin pode afetar planos para regressar à Lua? NASA vai investigar impacto appeared first on Tek Notícias.

Un meteorite ha esploso sopra il nord-est degli USA, generando boati e preoccupazione. Scopri le caratteristiche e l'importanza della sorveglianza.

Attention creative souls! While NASA might feel like an exclusive den of scientists, engineers, and otherworldly athletes, the agency is reaching out to storytellers and artists via two new initiatives.

“As NASA pushes the boundaries of exploration and innovation for the benefit of humanity, the agency is looking for partners to share mission stories covering Artemis Moon missions, nuclear propulsion, aeronautics, and more,” NASA wrote in a press release. Since “journalists” aren’t mentioned in either of these calls for creatives, it would appear that NASA is seeking other means to keep people talking about its missions. 

Specifically, they are seeking proposals from creatives including documentarians, songwriters, storytellers, and poets for projects about missions including Artemis III in 2027 and Space Reactor-1 Freedom to Mars in 2028, among others. Proposals are due by the end of June.

NASA is also launching another creative initiative called Moon Joy June. 

“To keep the Moon Joy alive after the Artemis II mission, NASA is hosting a month-long art challenge on Instagram, Threads, and Tumblr. Each week during the month of June 2026, NASA will provide a prompt to inspire participants to make and share their artistic creations,” they explain in an FAQ page.

The prompts have already been released, so artists looking to participate can already start brainstorming. Week one’s prompt is “launch,” week two will be “moon,” week three will be “crew,” and week four will be “Earth.” 

A note to the competitive-minded—the agency highlights that Moon Joy June is not a contest but an art challenge, meaning there will be no prize. And as if it could get any worse for type-A people, participants don’t actually have to follow the prompts. It seems like we’re in for a free-for-all artistic takeover of the three social media platforms.

Non-traditional art forms like nail art and latte foam art are also welcomed. In NASA’s words, “The sky is (not) the limit!” 

The post How you can help NASA (even if you failed math) appeared first on Popular Science.

As NASA looks ahead towards Artemis III in mid-2027, the agency is sharing new details on several projects, including a future permanent moon base and a drone mission called MoonFall. The mission will send four drones to survey the surface of the moon’s South Pole to spot potential landing sites for future Artemis astronauts. 

According to the update, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California has been developing the drone design and testing prototype hardware ahead of the scheduled 2028 launch. Each drone will land on the moon’s surface and gather high-resolution imagery of the terrain over the course of a single lunar day (up to 14 Earth days). After each drone’s last flight, its survive-the-night payload will continue to work for several months. Payloads that are designed to survive-the-night can endure the sub-zero temperatures of the lunar night, which can get as cold as -208 degrees Fahrenheit.

Each of the four drones should weigh about 550 pounds, and stand at four-feet tall and seven feet in diameter. They will use a Lunar Dashcam imaging system to create maps of the terrain. The drones will also be equipped with a laser retroflector array so that mission control can precisely locate the drones, a neutron spectrometer system to help determine how much (if any) subsurface water is present, and a spectrometer to measure radiation.

Texas-based Firefly Aerospace was selected to build the spacecraft that will transport the drones. Firefly’s Elytra spacecraft will carry the drones for a 45-day transit from the Earth to the moon. After entering lunar orbit, it will deorbit and perform a braking maneuver to send out the drones roughly 31 miles above the lunar South Pole.  

No stranger to lunar exploration, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander became the first commercially built lander to reach the lunar surface in March 2025. While on the moon, Blue Ghost delivered 10 NASA instruments designed to gather lunar subsurface data and also snapped some beautiful images of a solar eclipse. 

Some scientists worry that extracting resources from the moon could jeopardize research, while many Indigenous nations see the moon as sacred and are against any desecration. 

As of now, NASA and 66 other nations have signed the Artemis Accords. While not an international treaty, the Artemis Accords is an agreement for high-level principles of space exploration and provides a basic legal framework for exploring and developing the lunar surface during this century. However, the NASA-led Artemis group is in direct competition with an initiative led by China to explore the lunar South Pole and potentially extract its resources. 

The post Four drones will go where no astronaut have landed—yet appeared first on Popular Science.

While a holiday weekend has come and gone, May 26 is not without a cause for celebration. It’s National Paper Airplane Day! 

The annual day commemorates the homemade aeronautical toy that has fascinated (and frustrated the less crafty) children and adults for generations. According to National Day, the practice of constructing paper planes is sometimes called aerogami, after origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. Building paper planes that can soar through the air like a bird is believed to have originated in ancient China, where paper was invented around 105 CE. However, the art of folding it into an airplane may have been perfected in Japan, as it is similar to origami.

Here in the United States, instructions for folding the Basic Dart were included in a children’s book published in 1859, so it is safe to say kids and adults alike have been making them for over 167 years. The term paper airplane was then coined in 1907 and replaced paper dart as the dominant term by the 1950s. In 2022, Kim Kyu Tae nabbed the Guinness World Record for the Longest Paper Airplane Throw Ever with a flight of 252.6 feet. According to Guiness World Records, the longest time flying a paper aircraft is 31.2 seconds and was achieved by Rao Chongyi and a team in China in February.  

If you’re inspired to create the world’s best paper airplane, we have you covered. You can also look to the great minds at NASA for inspiration. After all, the first letter “A” in NASA stands for aeronautics. Their step-by-step NASA Space Crafts tutorial will not only help you make a colorful paper airplane, but also NASA’s X-57 Maxwell and the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology.

May your National Paper Airplane Day be free of paper cuts.

The post It’s National Paper Airplane Day: How to make a NASA-approved plane appeared first on Popular Science.

In what could turn out to be a huge setback for NASA’s highly ambitious plans to build a permanent Moon base, Jeff Bezos’ latest Blue Origin rocket erupted into a massive mushroom cloud on the launchpad last night.

During a wet dress rehearsal at the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral on Thursday evening, the company’s New Glenn rocket exploded in dramatic fashion. Footage shows an enormous fireball engulfing the entire launch pad, a sight visible from far away.

It’s the very last thing NASA needed. Just days ago, the space agency announced a slew of “Moon base” missions to build out a permanent presence on the lunar surface — and they hinged on New Glenn rockets launching two of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers that are delivering payloads, including rovers, there before the end of this year.

Even before Blue Origin’s latest setback, it was an enormously ambitious timeline. It’s unclear how the New Glenn explosion will affect NASA’s plans going forward, but it certainly doesn’t bode well, given the likely extensive damage to the surrounding pad.

“NASA is aware of the anomaly that occurred tonight at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” NASA’s administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult.”

“We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets,” he added. “We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”

Bezos appeared distraught following the catastrophe.

“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” he tweeted around 10 pm Eastern on Thursday. “It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it.”

“Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying,” he added. “It’s worth it.”

Even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has a long history of butting heads with Bezos, struck an empathetic pose.

“Most unfortunate,” he tweeted. “Rockets are hard.”

The news comes just over a month after Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket failed to deliver a communication satellite into a high enough orbit, turning it into nothing more than another piece of space junk.

The rocket and the firm’s Blue Moon lander are one of two options NASA is hoping to use to deliver astronauts to the surface of the Moon, alongside SpaceX’s Starship.

Unfortunately, Musk’s space company is similarly struggling to get its own rocket ready for prime time. Just yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was grounding Starship and launching a “mishap investigation” after the company’s Super Heavy booster failed to reignite the majority of its thrusters before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico on May 22. The second stage similarly erupted in a massive fireball after splashing down in the ocean.

“A return to flight of the Starship Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the regulator wrote in a statement.

More on New Glenn: Jeff Bezos’ Botched Space Launch Was So Bad It Could Threaten NASA’s Entire Moon Program

The post Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Explodes Into Mushroom Cloud, Dealing Massive Blow to NASA’s Moon Plans appeared first on Futurism.

NASA remains committed to developing a permanent presence on the Moon — space science budgets be damned.

During a Tuesday event, the space agency announced a slew of new contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Moon base infrastructure including lunar rovers, as well as timeframes for upcoming development and exploration missions.

Before the end of this year, NASA wants to send two of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers to the Moon’s surface to deliver two lunar terrain vehicles being developed by commercial partners Astrolab and Lunar Outpost.

Meanwhile, Firefly Aerospace, whose Blue Ghost lander successfully touched down on the Moon in March 2025, will develop drones to explore the rugged surface.

And that’s just the buildup to NASA’s Artemis 4 mission, the first planned crewed landing in over half a century, which is tentatively slated for 2028. Artemis 3, which was originally envisioned as a landing attempt, will now involve the testing of either or both Blue Origin’s lander and SpaceX’s Starship in low-Earth orbit sometime next year.

To call NASA’s plans for its Moon base ambitious would be a staggering understatement. For one, Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander has yet to successfully deliver a payload into Earth’s orbit following a failed attempt last month. Getting to the Moon, softly landing, and releasing a robotic lander will likely prove far more difficult.

The agency laid out plans for three “Moon Base missions,” starting with a Blue Moon delivery of scientific instruments in “fall 2026,” followed by a delivery of “more than 1,100 pounds of cargo on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander,” including a rover.

The third mission, which is “also targeted for this year,” will deliver even more scientific payloads, including ones being developed by the European Space Agency and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

“These missions are the first of more than a dozen missions that will be announced this year, each designed to generate operational data and reduce risk ahead of crewed Artemis surface activities,” the agency wrote in its writeup of Tuesday’s event.

The base itself will span hundreds of square miles, according to Moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan. Drones, called MoonFall, will mark the perimeter of said base in what could inevitably be a highly contentious marking of territory.

MoonFall, an initiative led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, aims to land near the lunar South Pole by 2028. High-definition optical cameras attached to drones measuring roughly seven feet across and four feet tall will take detailed imagery of the base’s envisioned terrain far ahead of any crewed landings.

In a note, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman vowed that the US would “never give up on the Moon again” by building out its Artemis program.

“We are going back to the Moon, building the base, and doing the other things,” he wrote, referencing John F. Kennedy’s iconic 1962 speech about going to the Moon. “This is no longer something to read in the history books, you are making history.”

However, given the vast degree of complexity involved, successfully launching not just one but a whole slew of missions on the surface of the Moon before the end of 2026 could soon get a massive reality check. In other words, we wouldn’t be shocked to hear from even more delays as Isaacman’s NASA dials up the pressure to build out a permanent presence on the Moon.

If deadlines were to slip — which, given historical precedent, is far from out of the question — the US could be beaten to the punch by the end of this decade after all, as experts continue to warn.

“It would not surprise me at all if China gets there first,” Open University lunar scientist Simeon Barber told the BBC.

More on the Moon base: NASA Announces Gigantic Armada of Moon Launches to “Build President Trump’s Moon Base,” Starting Next Year

The post NASA Releases Sweeping Plans for Moon Base appeared first on Futurism.

The Sun has broken a new record for continuous radio wave transmissions, blasting a powerful signal four times longer than any other similar phenomenon ever recorded.

Data from the cosmic outburst, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, details the record-breaking event, which lasted from August 21st to September 9th of 2025 — setting a record of 19 full days.

To be fair to the Sun, it’s entirely possible — very likely, really — that this has happened before. What makes the event stand out is the fact that we’ve been able to observe it for the first time in human history, using craft from four various NASA missions to record radio waves produced by electrons trapped within the star’s magnetic field.

According to IFL Science, the rare Sun communique was first spotted by the Solar Orbiter, a Sun-observing satellite launched by the European Space Agency and NASA in 2020. Normally, that would’ve been the end of it, as the longest previously recorded Sun-burst lasted just five days.

However, 12 days after the Solar Orbiter made its recordings, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe observed the same radio burst, along with the agency’s Wind spacecraft, which is designed to observe solar winds in transit to Earth. They were soon followed by NASA’s STEREO-A craft, which was used to track the source of the radio blast to a funnel-type structure in the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere.

Fortunately, this type of radio blast is harmless, unlike some other types of solar events which can knock out satellites or have devastating health effects on astronauts.

Still, the data collected during the event represents a veritable treasure trove for scientists, whose work on space weather could be crucial for predicting the kinds of Sun events that may actually pose a threat.

More on space: Scientists Detect Weird Anomalies in Clouds of Venus

The post Sun Suddenly Blasts Powerful Radio Transmission for 19 Continuous Days appeared first on Futurism.

NASA satellites designed to observe cyclone wind speeds and collapsing ice sheets have also proven capable of identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers. That could help monitor high-risk areas for aircraft and ships navigating the growing prevalence of GPS interference worldwide.

Two different NASA satellite systems showed how they could locate a known but mysterious GPS jammer within several kilometers of its position in Iran, according to an experiment by Sean Gorman, CEO and cofounder of the location-based technology company Zephr.xyz that was detailed in the magazine GPS World. Such jammers use strong signals to overpower the weaker radio signals coming from US-operated GPS satellites and other global navigation satellite systems.

Such NASA satellites cannot perform “near-real time monitoring” or pinpoint the exact location of GPS jammers, said Clara Chew, principal scientist and lead of the GNSS systems and data team at the California-based satellite manufacturer Muon Space, who was not involved in the study. But Chew told Ars that identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers “could potentially be helpful for flight planning” or for “indicating high risk areas for maritime shipping.”

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Forty years ago, the future seemed just around the corner—and the vehicle that was going to take us there was NASA's Space Shuttle. Originally envisioned as part of a larger integrated space transportation system, the shuttle was billed as a fully reusable vehicle, totally unlike the one-and-done capsules of the fading Apollo era, capable of making monthly (and perhaps even weekly) ferry flights to low Earth orbit.

The shuttle, it was hoped, would transform human space flight from extraordinary to mundane. Brands like Coke and Pepsi were quick to hop aboard and expand the Cola Wars into space, and there were even plans to blast Sesame Street's Big Bird into orbit.

The loss of Challenger in January 1986—carrying educator Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first private citizen in space—put the kibosh on all of that. The shuttle, while fantastically advanced, would never be the vehicle to help humankind slip all of our surly bonds, so to speak. Even operating at its most frantic peak in 1985 just before Challenger's loss, the shuttle hardware managed a maximum of nine flights in one calendar year; for most of the 1990s, it performed at five or six flights per year. Civilians in space—to say nothing of Big Bird—would have to wait.

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NASA satellites designed to observe cyclone wind speeds and collapsing ice sheets have also proven capable of identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers. That could help monitor high-risk areas for aircraft and ships navigating the growing prevalence of GPS interference worldwide.

Two different NASA satellite systems showed how they could locate a known but mysterious GPS jammer within several kilometers of its position in Iran, according to an experiment by Sean Gorman, CEO and cofounder of the location-based technology company Zephr.xyz that was detailed in the magazine GPS World. Such jammers use strong signals to overpower the weaker radio signals coming from US-operated GPS satellites and other global navigation satellite systems.

Such NASA satellites cannot perform “near-real time monitoring” or pinpoint the exact location of GPS jammers, said Clara Chew, principal scientist and lead of the GNSS systems and data team at the California-based satellite manufacturer Muon Space, who was not involved in the study. But Chew told Ars that identifying the approximate locations of GPS jammers “could potentially be helpful for flight planning” or for “indicating high risk areas for maritime shipping.”

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NASA officials announced contract awards for the initial elements of a lunar base on Tuesday, including two rovers that will provide mobility to astronauts.

With the series of announcements, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sought to maintain momentum around a Moon Base initiative revealed two months ago as part of the space agency's return to the Moon. "For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand, and we will not slow down," he said.

The manager for the lunar base, Carlos Garcia-Galan, said the space agency had selected two companies, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, to build approximately 1-ton rovers that would be ready for delivery to the Moon in 2028. Astrolab will receive $219 million for its "CLV-1" rover, and Lunar Outpost $220 million for its "Pegasus" rover, building upon initial contracts awarded two years ago. Each rover is expected to have a range of 200 km and be capable of driving autonomously, with guidance from operators on Earth, in addition to being driven by astronauts.

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SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.

The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket, the largest ever built, cleared the launch tower and turned onto an eastward heading over the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX's stainless-steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. Both past versions of Starship broke apart during launch on their inaugural flights.

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent a long email to employees on Friday morning outlining several structural changes that are intended to make the sprawling agency more efficient and allow it to better accomplish major goals, such as returning to the Moon and building a base there.

"I believe it is imperative to concentrate resources towards the highest priority objectives in the National Space Policy and liberate the best and brightest from needless bureaucracy and obstacles that impede progress," Isaacman wrote in his 3,000-word letter.

Isaacman's message stressed that no one at NASA will lose their jobs, and no field centers will be closed as part of these changes. Rather, the overall intent is to improve operational efficiency and focus on the agency's core missions. Isaacman laid these out as: execute on the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon; build an enduring Moon Base; develop a "Space Reactor Office" to get America underway on nuclear power in space; ignite an economy in low-Earth orbit; and build more X-planes and launch more science missions.

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NASA confirmed Thursday that the Russian segment of the International Space Station has begun leaking atmosphere into space again. It's an old problem that NASA recently hoped was resolved.

For more than half a decade, engineers from Roscosmos and NASA have been tracking the leak rate from a small Russian module attached to the space station that leads to a docking port. The source of these leaks, microscopic structural cracks, have been difficult to find and address.

In January, NASA said that after multiple inspections and sealant applications, the pressure inside this segment, known as the PrK module, had reached a "stable configuration." The PrK module is essentially a transfer tunnel attached to the Zvezda Service Module on the Russian segment of the space station.

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