Category: Space Stations

Space stations in orbit or planned

‘Star Wars: Episode I: Jedi Power Battles’ continues to be the most fascinating ‘The Phantom Menace’ tie-in video game

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Somehow, Jedi Power Battles has returned. This won’t ring a bell if you’re a Star Wars fan who’s stuck to only the best Star Wars games of all time over the years, but many Jedi veterans will celebrate this return to a profoundly off-beat action romp which revisited The Phantom Menace as a ‘beat ’em up‘ game. The developer-publisher Aspyr is no stranger to bringing retro Star Wars video games back from the dead, and, so far, the wins outweigh the failures. Last year, Aspyr worked with Lucasfilm Games to…

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Chinese commercial Ceres-1 rocket launches 5 weather satellites to orbit (video)

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A Chinese commercial space launch company is continuing its success with a small solid rocket ahead of a more ambitious launch later this year. The Ceres-1 four-stage solid propellant rocket lifted off at 5:11 a.m. EST on Jan. 20 (1011 GMT; or 8:11 p.m. local time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China. Galactic Energy, the Ceres-1 manufacturer and operator, announced in a statement that five satellites had been successfully inserted into preplanned orbits. Aboard the flight were four Yunyao-1 commercial meteorological satellites (satellites 37-40)…

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Strange ‘quasi-moon’ of Earth gets named Cardea, after goddess of door hinges

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Until we live in a world based purely on sliding doors, door hinges will remain some of the most unsung heroes of our society. We’d still be able to saunter through door frames, sure, but nothing would so seamlessly connect the place we once were with the place we are going. On a metaphorical level, door hinges represent an intermediate state we use to move back and forth, and decide when to lock ourselves in the locations of here or there. It is thus only fitting for a goddess to…

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Astrophotographer captures a ‘Great Dragon’ in the Pelican Nebula (photo)

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Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical “Skyscapes” that connect both Earth and the night sky. The image features a dark region of space found between the Pelican Nebula and the Cygnus Wall, which are both part of the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. This…

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Earth’s elusive ‘ignorosphere’ could shed new light on auroras

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Japanese scientists have created the first-ever long-term dataset about Earth’s entire atmosphere, stretching all the way to space. They hope the project will help shed light on some little-explored processes taking place inside our planet’s gaseous shroud, including the magnificent northern lights. Some parts of Earth’s atmosphere are studied continuously in incredible detail. For example, millions of weather stations all around the world, hundreds of meteorological balloons and countless airplanes provide daily measurements of the entire troposphere, the atmosphere’s lowest region. The balloons also reach the lower part of the…

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Finland becomes 53rd country to join the Artemis Accords for moon exploration

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The Artemis Accords has just gained its 53rd member nation, bolstering NASA’s efforts to establish peaceful and cooperative international space exploration. Finland joined NASA’s Artemis Accords on Jan. 21 through a signing ceremony that took place on the sidelines of the Winter Satellite Workshop 2025 in Espoo, Finland. The signing makes the Nordic country the latest to commit to the safe and responsible exploration of space that benefits humanity, according to a NASA statement. “Finland has been part of the space exploration community for decades with Finnish companies and research…

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Bill Nelson steps down as NASA chief as Trump begins 2nd term

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Bill Nelson has stepped down as NASA administrator, ending a half-century of public service. Nelson and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy left the agency on Monday (Jan. 20), the day that Donald Trump began his second term as president. Trump has appointed Janet Petro, who most recently served as director of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, as NASA’s interim chief. “As I leave public office today after 53 years, thank you for the great privilege of a lifetime of serving the people of our country. I am humbled and…

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Station Science Top News: Jan. 17, 2025

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Insights into metal alloy solidification Researchers report details of phase and structure in the solidification of metal alloys on the International Space Station, including formation of microstructures. Because these microstructures determine a material’s mechanical properties, this work could support improvements in techniques for producing coatings and additive manufacturing or 3D printing processes. METCOMP, an ESA (European Space Agency) investigation, studied solidification in microgravity using transparent organic mixtures as stand-ins for metal alloys. Conducting the research in microgravity removed the influence of convection and other effects of gravity. Results help scientists…

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Hubble Telescope spies newborn stars in famous Orion Nebula (photo)

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Two young stars shine bright in the dusty depths of the Orion Nebula in a new Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 1,300 light-years from Earth, these young stars, also known as protostars, reside in a hotbed for star formation: the Orion Nebula, which is the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth and is home to hundreds of newborn stars. The recent photo from the Hubble Space Telescope captures two of these protostars, called HOPS 150 and HOPS 153, both of which take their names from the Herschel Orion Protostar…

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‘We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.’ President Trump wants astronauts to raise the American flag on Mars

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President Donald Trump wants to lead the United States to Mars. After taking the oath of office to be sworn in as the 47th U.S. president on Monday (Dec. 20), Trump laid out his vision for the next four years in an inauguration speech that called for a return to American expansionism and exploration. “My message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization,” Trump said during his speech inside the Capitol rotunda. “The…

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