The U.S. just celebrated its 250th birthday, and Americans living off the planet had a great view of some of the parties down below. “The International Space Station orbited over Los Angeles on July 4th as America marked 250 years of independence with a burst of fireworks lighting up the city below — a celebration so bright it reached all the way to space!” NASA officials said on Monday (July 6) via the agency’s ISS X account. That post featured a 15-second video captured from the orbiting lab, which showed…
Read MoreWatch SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch 81 satellites early on July 7
SpaceX will launch a passel of satellites to orbit early Tuesday morning (July 7), and you can watch the action live. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 81 payloads is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, during a 95-minute window that opens at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT; 12:10 a.m. local California time). You can watch the mission, which is called Transporter-17, live via SpaceX. Coverage will begin about 15 minutes before launch. As its name suggests, Transporter-17 will be the 17th mission of SpaceX‘s…
Read MoreMore clues surface about the origins of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
More evidence that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is much older than our solar system has come to light, along with clues that it formed on the outskirts of the protoplanetary disk belonging to its parent star long ago. Earlier this year, researchers led by Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center revealed that data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggested that 3I/ATLAS is between 10 and 12 billion years old, based on the ratios of its carbon and deuterium isotopes. This would make it more than twice…
Read MoreNASA Takes Flight For America’s 250th
NASA/Keegan Barber NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman leads a flyover featuring his personally owned Northrop F-5 Tiger during the Great American State Fair on July 4, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For 250 years, America has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible. From the earliest days of exploration, to the first steps on the Moon and the missions shaping our future, NASA represents the spirit of discovery that defines our nation. As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, Freedom 250 highlights how innovation, courage, and scientific leadership have…
Read MoreNASA Seeks Industry Input on Second Phase of Commercial Space Stations
Credit: NASA On Monday, NASA released a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking feedback from American companies on the next phase of its commercial space stations strategy, aimed at ensuring a seamless transition of activities in low Earth orbit from the International Space Station. “NASA’s review reflects what we’ve been hearing from industry throughout this process. Industry believes it can meet the timelines and that a viable commercial marketplace exists where NASA is one customer among many,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We’re focused on supporting those efforts, enabling the…
Read MoreNASA’s CAPSTONE Completes Extended Mission Testing Lunar Technologies
5 Min Read NASA’s CAPSTONE Completes Extended Mission Testing Lunar Technologies The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) has achieved all primary and extended mission objectives. Credits: NASA As NASA prepares for a sustained human presence on the Moon, missions will increasingly require spacecraft that can navigate and communicate without a direct connection to Earth. NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, validated and advanced these capabilities. Designed to test and validate technologies in lunar orbit, CAPSTONE launched in June 2022…
Read MoreMeet the Cygnus, the High-Flying Swan
Meet Cygnus, the Swan, a high-flying constellation that looks like its namesake and has a rich mythological history. The post Meet the Cygnus, the High-Flying Swan appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreNASA tests advanced new Mars rover prototype in the California desert (video)
A new rover prototype is teaching NASA scientists how to design robots that can think for themselves and navigate terrain that would leave old rovers stuck in the lunar or Martian dust. The Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain (ERNEST), developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recently completed a 16-mile (26 kilometers) trek through the desert in Southern California. The journey took more than 37 hours of driving time over the course of seven days, and ERNEST completed it almost entirely autonomously, “with minimal intervention” from engineers monitoring the…
Read MoreHe-Man and beyond: 20 sci-fi cartoons (some iconic, some weird) that transported ’80s and ’90s kids to strange new worlds
Kids who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s couldn’t enjoy the massive selection of live-action sci-fi TV available right now. With the biggest out-of-this-world adventures likely to be found in theaters, many of the most memorable — and undoubtedly the weirdest — concepts tended to be found in Saturday morning cartoons. This is a realm of exposition-heavy opening credits, relentlessly earwormy theme tunes, and heroes who, for no obvious reason, choose to hang out with cute/annoying [delete as appropriate] comedy sidekicks like Orko and Snarf. The massive success of…
Read More10 best Spanish cities to see the total solar eclipse 2026
For the Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse, Spain’s great cities will be pulling in eclipse-chasers from across Europe, but not every famous destination is equally well placed. In Barcelona and Madrid, the eclipse is a near miss — dramatic on paper, yet ultimately disappointing. Madrid gets a 99.96% partial eclipse, which means no totality, so no corona, no twilight sky and no plunge in temperature. Cue a mass exodus from Spain’s two biggest cities in search of totality. To experience a total solar eclipse, you need to be inside…
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