space01 Jun 2026
Gemini 3 Corned Beef Sandwich Changed NASA Food Rules
During Gemini 3, John Young sneaked a corned beef sandwich into orbit, and the crumbs helped highlight why NASA tightly controlled food in spacecraft.
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Follow whispers from the silent cosmos — distant galaxies, black holes and the mysteries of the universe.
space26 May 2026
Luna 9 Images Reached Britain Before Moscow Published Them
Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, and Jodrell Bank later decoded its image signals to publish the first lunar surface panorama before the Soviet release.
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space21 May 2026
New Horizons Carried Clyde Tombaugh's Ashes to Pluto
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft carried a small capsule containing Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes, making its trip to Pluto a symbolic memorial to the astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet.
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space18 May 2026
6 Spacecraft That Outlived Their Original Missions
This list highlights six space missions whose operations lasted far beyond their original plans or that were successfully revived after major setbacks, leading to major additional scientific returns.
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space10 May 2026
US Space Mining Law and the Asteroid Ownership Debate
The article explains that U.S. law allows private ownership of asteroid resources after extraction, while the Outer Space Treaty forbids countries from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies.
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space10 May 2026
Mars Recurring Slope Lineae May Be Dry Dust Flows
Many Martian recurring slope lineae, once thought to hint at salty liquid water, are now more strongly explained as dark streaks made by dry dust and sand moving downhill.
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space09 May 2026
Luna 3 and the First Far Side Moon Photos
Luna 3’s 1959 mission photographed the Moon’s far side by developing, scanning, and radioing images from inside the spacecraft instead of sending film back to Earth.
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space07 May 2026
Hubble Mirror Flaw Traced to a Tiny Testing Error
Hubble’s early blurry images were caused by a tiny polishing error in its primary mirror, later corrected by astronauts in 1993.
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space29 Apr 2026
Crab Pulsar Signals Shifted by Tiny Plasma Filaments
Astronomers observed that radio pulses from the Crab pulsar were briefly delayed and echoed because small plasma filaments in the Crab Nebula crossed the line of sight and distorted the signal.
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space24 Apr 2026
7 Space Instruments That Made Outsized Discoveries
The article highlights how compact space instruments have produced outsized scientific discoveries by measuring dust, water, minerals, magnetic fields, elements, and radiation across multiple missions.
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space23 Apr 2026
Tardigrades Survived Open Space in ESA FOTON-M3 Test
In 2007, tardigrades on ESA’s FOTON-M3 mission were exposed to vacuum and ultraviolet radiation in space, and some survived, with a few still able to reproduce afterward.
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space21 Apr 2026
Bennu Rock Ejections Show Asteroids Aren't Geologically Still
OSIRIS-REx observed asteroid Bennu ejecting small rocks and dust from its surface, showing the rubble-pile asteroid is more active than expected.
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space17 Apr 2026
Queqiao Relay Satellite Made Chang'e 4 Far-Side Landing Possible
China’s Chang’e 4 mission used the Queqiao relay satellite to maintain communications with the Moon’s far side during its landing and rover operations.
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space12 Apr 2026
Moon Treaty 1979 and the Unsettled Fight Over Lunar Resources
The 1979 Moon Treaty proposed an international framework for using lunar resources, but key space powers never ratified it, leaving current rules over Moon mining unsettled.
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space11 Apr 2026
2020 SO Asteroid Was Actually a 1966 Rocket Booster
A 2020 near-Earth object called 2020 SO was initially mistaken for an asteroid, but orbital analysis showed it was actually the Centaur upper stage from NASA’s 1966 Surveyor 2 mission.
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space09 Apr 2026
Karl Jansky and the Radio Noise That Changed Astronomy
Karl Jansky’s investigation of radio static in the early 1930s revealed radio noise coming from the Milky Way, helping launch radio astronomy.
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space01 Apr 2026
Lunokhod 1's Reflector Became Useful Again After About 40 Years
Modern lunar imaging relocated Lunokhod 1, allowing scientists to use its onboard laser retroreflector again for lunar laser ranging.
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space31 Mar 2026
A Star's Slight Wobble Helped Identify a Super-Jupiter
HD 10697 (109 Piscium) was found to have a hidden companion whose mass is estimated at about six times Jupiter’s, inferred from the star’s slight wobble rather than direct imaging.
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space30 Mar 2026
How Chariklo Became the First Small Body Known to Have Rings
In 2013, astronomers discovered that the centaur Chariklo has a ring system, making it the first known small body in the Solar System found to have rings.
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space26 Mar 2026
Salyut 7 Was Thought Lost Until Cosmonauts Brought It Back
Soviet cosmonauts in 1985 successfully reached the silent space station Salyut 7 and manually restored its power and key systems.
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space25 Mar 2026
When Kepler Lost Its Aim, It Became K2
Kepler’s reaction wheel failures ended its original steady-staring mission, but engineers repurposed the spacecraft as K2, which used solar pressure to maintain pointing and continue exoplanet observations in a new survey mode.
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space18 Mar 2026
How Ingenuity Turned Flight on Mars Into a Working Tool
Ingenuity began as a Mars technology demo but evolved into a practical aerial scout that worked with Perseverance to help survey terrain and improve route planning.
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space18 Mar 2026
SuperTIGER Is Back From Antarctic Ice With Rare Cosmic-Ray Data
Scientists recovered the SuperTIGER balloon payload and its cosmic-ray measurement data after it had been stranded in Antarctic ice.
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space16 Mar 2026
When Hubble Looked at "Nothing" and Found Thousands of Galaxies
The Hubble Deep Field was a long-exposure Hubble image that showed thousands of distant galaxies in a patch of sky that had seemed nearly empty.
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space09 Mar 2026
NASA's Artemis Program Is Designed for More Than a Moon Landing
NASA’s Artemis program is designed to enable repeated lunar missions, a sustained human presence on the Moon, and future deep-space exploration.
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space09 Mar 2026
Rogue Planets Are Real, and the Milky Way May Be Full of Them
Rogue planets are real, starless planets thought to form in ordinary planetary systems and later get ejected, making them hard to detect and potentially more common than once assumed.
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space08 Mar 2026
On Venus, a Day Lasts Longer Than a Year
Venus has a day longer than its year because it rotates very slowly; it also rotates in the opposite direction from most planets.
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space04 Mar 2026
How the First Stars Switched On the Universe
The article explains how Population III stars formed from primordial hydrogen and helium and how they began enriching the universe with heavier elements.
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space02 Mar 2026
Why Mercury's Temperatures Swing So Widely
Mercury has extreme temperature swings because it has a very thin atmosphere and a long day-night cycle, allowing its surface to heat up in daylight and cool rapidly at night.
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space01 Mar 2026
Why Saturn's Rings Look So Bright From Earth
Saturn’s rings look so bright because they are made mostly of reflective water ice, spread across a vast ring system that is very thin.
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