Space

New Automated Pipeline Digs Years Into Archival Sky Surveys to Find Asteroids That Were Hiding in Plain Sight Date: 2026-07-16 Featured image: Archival Zwicky Transient Facility image showing asteroid trails; credit: ZTF/Caltech A team of researchers from Georgia Tech and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed an automated probabilistic pipeline that can find near-Earth asteroids […]

SpaceX to Deploy First Starlink V3 Satellites on Suborbital Starship Flight 13 as Mega-Constellation Enters Next Era Date: 2026-07-16 Featured image: SpaceX Starship on the launch pad at Starbase, Texas; credit: SpaceX SpaceX is poised to cross a critical threshold on July 16, launching the first real payload on a Starship test flight. Flight 13 […]

Japan Sets Sights on 30 Launches a Year as Government Bets Big on Domestic Space Access Date: 2026-07-16 Featured image: JAXA H3 rocket launching from Tanegashima Space Center; credit: JAXA/MHI The Japanese government has set an ambitious goal of 30 domestic rocket launches per year by the early 2030s, a roughly 10-fold increase over the […]

An object long classified as a near-Earth asteroid has been reclassified as a comet after NASA researchers detected nongravitational perturbations in its motion and confirmed the presence of a faint tail and coma. The object, previously designated 1998 SH2, will now carry the additional comet designation P/1998 SH2. On August 28, 2025, it passed safely […]

For the first time, astronomers have directly detected an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. The discovery marks a major milestone in the search for potentially life-supporting worlds beyond our solar system. The planet, LHS 1140 b, lies 48 light-years from Earth and orbits a red dwarf star […]

Buzz Aldrin’s mission-saving felt-tip pen sells for $857,600 at auction A dried-out felt-tip marker and a snapped-off piece of molded black plastic, together responsible for saving the Apollo 11 mission from potential disaster, sold for $857,600 at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday. What might otherwise have been worthless bits of trash commanded top dollar because […]

Move Over, GPS: Navigation Satellites in Low Earth Orbit Are Making a Comeback With 100x Stronger Signals Featured image: Artist’s concept of a Xona Pulsar satellite in low Earth orbit; credit: Xona Space Systems For more than three decades, GPS has been the silent backbone of modern civilization, guiding everything from airplane landings to smartphone […]

Why Astronauts’ Bodies Waste Away in Space: New ISS Study Pinpoints Failing Mitochondria as the Root Cause Featured image: JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi working with cell culture experiments in the Kibo module on the ISS; credit: JAXA/NASA Astronauts lose muscle mass and bone density in space, a well-known problem that has limited long-duration spaceflight for […]

How Hard Is It to Build Orbital Data Centers, Actually? Ars Runs the Numbers on SpaceX’s Trillion-Dollar Constellation Featured image: SpaceX AI1 satellite concept art with massive solar arrays and radiator panels; credit: SpaceX SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft. The company envisions launching […]

NASA Study of Pristine Meteorite That Crashed Through a New Jersey Roof Reveals Ancient Asteroid Brines and Life’s Building Blocks Featured image: NASA/JSC image of a polished slice of the Hillsborough meteorite showing C1 clasts embedded in the CM2 matrix; credit: NASA/JSC A meteorite that crashed through a New Jersey homeowner’s roof in July 2024 […]