Month: December 2021

The White House has given NASA a New Year’s Eve “go” to continue operations on board the International Space Station through 2030, granting the orbital outpost a six-year life extension. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was directed by the Biden-Harris administration to work with the agency’s partners, including the European Space Agency (ESA), Canadian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Russia’s federal space corporation Roscosmos, to enable the International Space Station’s use throughout the rest of this decade. “I’m pleased that the Biden-Harris administration has committed to continuing station operations…

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Orbiting more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) over Earth and separated by tens of millions of light-years from many of the interstellar objects it studies, the Hubble Space Telescope takes “working remotely” to a new extreme. Even as the world below grappled with another pandemic year, weird and wonderful space discoveries flooded in from above, with astronomers pulling back the curtain on monster black holes, invisible magnetic megastructures and a cosmic treasure trove of extraterrestrial planets.  As a reminder that the universe just gets stranger and stranger the farther you…

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The International Space Station is a state-of-the-art laboratory where astronauts perform hundreds of important experiments every year — but that does not mean that life on orbit is all work and no play for the outpost’s crews. In between their other assignments, NASA astronauts take part in in-flight educational downlinks with schools around the country, answering students’ questions about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) topics. Some of those exchanges are a source of fun, too! “For the first time I am going to attempt a triple, so here we go,”…

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This short movie of the James Webb Space Telescope moving through space was captured by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project on Dec. 29, 2021. (Image credit: Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project) Thanks to images from a robotic Earth telescope, you can now watch NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope travel through the final frontier. The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaborative effort decades in the making involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, launched in the early hours of Dec. 25. Four days later, on…

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If you’re a budding stargazer looking for great binoculars deals, then you’re in the right place. While many would gravitate toward telescopes for space-obsessed friends and family, binoculars are just as wonderful for skywatching.  Modern binoculars are sharp enough to let you see all kinds of stars and galaxies. They have a wider field of view than telescopes, so you can take in more of the night sky. And binoculars are easily portable, making them great to bring on vacation and stargazing trips.  What’s more, even the best binoculars don’t…

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